


Pray With Me

by AnaBastow



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fill-in-the-Blank, Season/Series 06 Spoilers, Season/Series 07 Spoilers, Season/Series 08 Spoilers, Season/Series 09 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-11-15 07:16:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 46,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11225991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnaBastow/pseuds/AnaBastow
Summary: This is a fill-in-the-blanks fic. It starts with the moment I think Scully starts to think about motherhood again. I placed that happening after Milagro for reasons you will see in the text and ends before Nothing important happened today I.I rearranged the timeline of the episodes in a way I think it makes sense story wise based on the characters dialogue and behavior.In this text my order is; Milagro, Biogenesis-The Sixth Extinction-Amor Fati,(Per Manum flashbacks), The Unnatural, Three of a kind, Field Trip, Hungry, Millenium, Sein und Zeit, Closure, all things, Rush, Fight Club, Hollywood A.D. The rest of the episodes are the season's order. My reasoning is that in The Unnatural Mulder jokes with Scully about her problems, including her biological clock. Now Mulder can be daft but this is a cruel comment to make given that he knows Scully is barren, but if she asked him to be the sperm donor after Milagro and they are doing the preparations the joke makes sense: Both are hopeful the procedure will work. Then the trilogy has to have happened before the petition too, because IMO Mulder wouldn't dream of a family with Diana if he and Scully were already talking about that even if it didn't take in the end.





	1. PART I.  STARBUCK'S LOG (After X-Files episode Milagro)

**Author's Note:**

> First:  
> English is not my first language. I tried my best to clean up the text, but if you are the type that gets distracted by imperfect grammar you probably won't enjoy this. If you choose to read it, please don't doubt my intellectual capacity or my love and understanding of the show or the characters over this. I could had chosen to wait until my English is 100% perfect before I write in this language, but that could take a lifetime. There is only so much time in the world to share one’s views with other people who might enjoy reading what I have to say. So please instead of bashing, send me a message with any corrections you think it needs. I will do my best to update it and learn.
> 
> Second:  
> The text does deal with God as really existing in this universe which I think is Chris Carter’s intent in TFX so if you feel uncomfortable with that concept this text might not be for you either. It helps if when you read this you think that Chris Carter is God. ;)
> 
> But if you believe in God be warned that there is a lot of contradiction on how the characters think about him depending on what is going on, so it might offend some. This is not my intention, but I do think that fits the turmoil and ups and downs of the emotional roller-coaster that is Mulder and Scully's intimate life.
> 
> Third:  
> I change voices and perspectives in this text because I felt it served to be able to tell details in specific ways. Hope it’s not too annoying.
> 
> Fourth:  
> There is a humorous intermission. If you don’t like the humor episodes, you can skip it. It won't affect the story.
> 
> Copyright Disclaimer: All characters property of 1013 and Chris Carter.  
> I really hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.  
> Blessings!  
> Ana Bastow

Agent Scully woke up from the blackout trying to push his assailant away from her. The memory of the killer sticking his hand inside her, going through her tissues and muscles like a serpent was still fresh on her mind. She still could feel the warm blood splattering against her skin, the desperate attempts to shoot him and how the bullets went through him like he was ghost. He kept navigating inside her directly aiming for her heart. The panic as she realized she was going to suffer the fate of the bodies she had examined brought a bitter taste on her throat. She tried to fight back, but blackness engulfed her with the terrifying fear she was never going to wake up.  
Now instead she felt the familiar sensation of the skin of her partner at the tip of her fingers. Once her eyes focused she saw Mulder and she knew instantly that she was safe. Her tears of relief became sobs of despair that couldn't be contained. Mulder held her, letting her cry on his shoulder, holding her with his strong arms. A few minutes passed before she finally managed to calm herself enough to at least stop bawling.  
"Scully..." Mulder said carefully  
"Are you hurt?" She touched her chest, her shirt was open, stained with her own blood. Mulder looked at her while she examined her skin. She was shocked by the fact that she seemed to be intact.  
"There are not open wounds or bleeding..,” she said. He exhaled on relief.  
"I need to call reinforcements Padgett was burning the evidence in the basement and his accomplice wasn't here when I found you. Both probably already left, but we need to see if we can find them." Scully sat up trying to push back the memories of the attack so she could do her work.  
"Mulder he might still be in the building. Go, pursue the suspect..." Mulder shook his head.  
"I won't leave you alone, he could come back for you..,” he said in a serious tone.  
"Mulder I will be fine..."  
"But I won't be..." His eyes were intense. She nodded, understanding that she would had done the same on his place.  
"Call reinforcements, we will pursue together..,” she said. He nodded and took his phone. She stood up, she wasn't light-headed and aside from a slight headache that seemed to come from the stress, she was fit enough to aid her partner. She looked at the holes in the wall and then opened her gun to check her clip; it was empty. She couldn't think at the moment on the implications of what just happened.  
"Do you...?" Mulder handed her a new clip. She took it, loading her weapon again.  
"Ready?" He asked.  
"Yeah..." They both went back to the basement. The door of the burner was ope,n a few pages were scattered around the floor. In the same surface the body of Padgett laid in the ground. Scully's doctors instincts kicked in and she went to check if he was still alive. Once she was close to him she could see his heart on his hand. Not open wound just like the other victims. She still checked for a pulse.  
"Maybe his accomplice killed him too," She said out loud not really believing it, but saying it nevertheless just to convince herself of the logical conclusion.  
"Maybe...I will search the rest of the building." Mulder said while she remained with the body. She could hear the police siren's approaching already. She took a moment to stare at the writer's face. He seemed at peace, happy even. She wasn't sure how to feel about it. He obviously was involved on the murders, probably asked his associated to kill her, but there was a part of her that felt sorry for him. She still couldn't think why was she ever voluntarily on this man's presence. Maybe her investigator's impulse to figure out his motives. Yeah that must be it, she thought and decided that this was a good enough explanation. She did as she was trained, distance herself emotionally from the situation and looked at it like with clinical eyes.  
By the time the authorities arrived she was completely back to her usual professional self.  
Mulder turned up nothing, but instructed the police to search in the nearby areas. He also gave them a detailed description of Nascimento and command them to spread it to the locals authorities, airports and state lines if he tried to leave the country.  
Meanwhile, Scully asked to be physically examined by the paramedics just in case there were any internal injuries or bleeding. Mulder was on the phone when she was done.  
"It seems no one saw him come inside the building or get out..." He recounted.  
"Why are you doing this?" She asked, he frowned.  
"I mean you don't really believe that man was real, don't you?" She knew what his theory was, why was he even bothering to pursue this as a normal case.  
"Well If I'm right this is just more paperwork waiting for the X-Files...But if I'm wrong and he escapes he could ...He could come to finish the job..,” he said looking slightly on the direction where her blood still soaked her blouse. She nodded looking at her shirt. Of course Mulder wanted to make sure she was going to be safe.  
"I will have them send the body to the morgue...Do you want someone else to examine it?" Mulder asked biting his lower lip. She found the request curious.  
"No...I will do it" She seemed surprised he felt she wouldn't want to do it herself. This man was a stranger that she barely knew, one that might had plotted her murder. Maybe he feared she will be too emotionally involved. But she was not.  
After doing the regular procedure she went upstairs to Mulder's apartment to pick up her jacket and some paperwork.  
"Can I ask you something" Mulder said. For some reason a lump formed on her throat. Was he going to ask about her feelings for Padgett? She didn't have any, but then she didn't have any explanation of why was she so blind to the fact that he was clearly guilty if not of murder conspiracy, of stalking her.  
"Would you let me drive you home?" She gave him a questioning look.  
"I want to check your apartment just in case..." This was very out of character of him. Still treating this like a normal case of stalking and attempted murder.  
"I can check the apartment myself..,” she said firmly. Mulder's face fell off slightly, but he nodded. No one else would had been able to tell he was worried about her but she could.  
"But I'm too tired to drive and I need my car tomorrow." She handed him her keys without saying anything else. It was probably the most rational choice at the moment.  
The drive was uncomfortably silent. Mulder was not in the mood for jokes or comments. He had a determined look on his face.  
"So just you don't worry I was planning to go away in the weekend."  
"Okay...Can I ask you where are you going to be in case I need to reach you?"  
"I'm visiting my mom. Bill's family is visiting and I was going to give my nephew Matt some presents I bought."  
"Sounds like a nice weekend...Still keep your eyes open." She chuckled darkly.  
"I'm sure I will be safe...Whatever curse has fallen upon me, my family seems immune." Mulder glanced at her.  
"What do you mean?" She looked out the window, watching the normal world passing by them, like so many times before.  
"Mulder, I know lots of normal people, family, friends, people at church...You think all of them find maniacs with supernatural powers in every corner? Their problems are so mundane; debts, kids, colds, taxes, robberies...Is like we live in this parallel universe where everything we touch become an X-Files..." Mulder kept silent Scully felt like saying more.  
"There are literally, millions of women that go to work, live in my neighborhood, visit the same church, but Padgett was taken by me, of all people me. What are the odds of that?"  
"I thought you thought he was a regular criminal with an accomplice?" His voice was lower, a tint of sorrow on it.  
"I do, I do. But, if you are right and I don't know why today I feel like you might be. He had this power to create an assassin out of thin air, that is the sort of thing that seems a recurring theme in my life..." Scully was in the edge of tears again, but this time she didn't want Mulder to see her. She kept quiet while they finished the drive. Mulder parked her car on her spot and got out without saying a word. He started to check the lot for signs of suspicious activity. Scully blinked a few tears, wiped them clean and got out for the car. Mulder shook his head to the unspoken question and both went upstairs. Nothing in their way. They opened the elevator and found it empty. Mulder got his gun out and Scully opened the door. They both did a search like they were trained to do. They didn't even needed to coordinate they had done this thousands of times before.  
"I guess he is not here." Mulder nodded. He put his gun on his waist and walked towards the door, possibly to leave. Scully was going close it behind him. He opened but didn't move.  
"Scully...You are not the one that is cursed..." Mulder said. He turned around his expression painful like she hasn't seen in a while.  
"I'm the one that has brought this monsters into your life..."  
"Mulder...I..."  
"Ever since you started working on the X-Files your life has been practically destroyed." He sighed  
"You have no reasons to stay with m...working with me... Maybe is time for you to think about what you need...Maybe that normal life full of debts, taxes... mundane issues are just waiting for you to step back in...So you can be protected again, so you can escape the darkness." Mulder's was working hard on keeping a neutral expression, but Scully knew him better than this.  
"Do you want me to go?" She asked her voice smaller, she suppressed a sob.  
"You know that I don't, but I will be fine if you are safe again...I know I nag you all the time to follow me in my crazy mission, but you don't have to listen to me...I mean you will have everything you dreamed about if not for me..." She knew he was wrong.  
"Mulder if it was not for you I would be dead now." Scully said she attempted to close the distance between then, but decided to stay put.  
"You were only dying because of me, because of you work in the X-Files, you got abducted and then you got your cancer and..."  
"Mulder our files are full of thousands of people who were abducted. Men, children, countless women that were never in contact with you before they were taken. The samples we found in that mine were taken from the smallpox vaccines decades before we met... The way I see it, it was just a matter of time for them to take me too." Mulder's face is distorted. He never thought of it that way.  
"That is really what you think?" He said his voice breaking a little.  
"Mulder, I'm not a masochist. I don't have a death wish...If I were to think this was your fault I would had left ages ago....You are not that funny." He smiles in spite of himself.  
"Think about it, about all those women in MUFON all of them never knew about our work and if they were right, if we were taken together to that room I'm the only one that survived...The only one with a chance to..." She cannot hold her tears this time. She remembered Penny's words. She really never forgot them, but sometimes the memory came too strong and she couldn't hold the pain.  
"To live...to be happy...to have..." Mulder placed a hand on her shoulder, he looks at her with compassion. She embraces him again, letting her tears fall. He cradles her on his arms in silence and lets her be. After a few minutes she let's go. She continues talking to him.  
"I know that you think, that if you feel guilty somehow that makes things better for me. It doesn't, I can't bear the idea that all this time, that of everything we had lived together, when you see me all you can feel is guilt..,” she said. Mulder frowned.  
"Scully it might be true this time but what about your sister? How can I live with myself knowing that you lost her because of me?" Scully looks down in silent for a moment.  
"Mulder...Would you had taken that bullet for Melissa if you had the chance?" She knew the answer.  
"Of course..."  
"So would I... but so would had she...This people that tried to kill me, tried to kill you too...Melissa ended up being the victim. But I know in my heart that she wouldn't have changed anything if she knew..." She held back some tears. Her sister was a hero, she always was.  
"Melissa's life was cut short by these terrible forces, but she wouldn't have wanted us to live miserable half-lives on her memory," Mulder's face was full of confusion and dread but there was some hope and relief on it. It seemed like some burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He nodded.  
"I will see you Monday..." He simply said. Scully nodded and let him go. It was pointless to stay talking about this. She knew how stubborn he was, just hoped that someday her words will actually convince him to stop burdening himself with the actions of men unlike him.  
Scully locked the door behind her. She was so exhausted, all she can wish for is a warm bath. She undressed placing the blood spotted blouse in the laundry basket. Before she went inside the tub she looks at herself in the mirror.  
Padgett's words describing her are almost forgotten, but the parts she hated the most linger. He imagined her as a pristine goddess of perfect skin. But she had scars on her body not many, but her skin told a story. A tale of tears and pains but also of strength and courage. She wondered if this was what the men that seek her affections imagined she had to offer, a blank virgin canvas where they could project their fantasies? He really thought that a FBI agent will spent all these years doing her job and still remained unscathed? A bitter sound came from her throat. She prepared her bath, got inside letting the warm bubbles and the scent embrace her. She let her hand rest on her stomach. Padgett never imagined she craved for a child too. He imagined her a woman who fulfilled his erotic needs, not a real human with needs on her own, beyond one night of passion. This brought back long deep hurts and fears that she rarely allowed herself to think about. At the end of the bath she put on the first pajama she found and lie on her bed. Promising herself that tomorrow she will be back to be the strong, capable and rational Agent Scully she felt compelled to be, but tonight she was going to be just a woman crying on her bed. Mourning that she still had a lot of love to give, but no one that really wanted it.


	2. VISITATION

Scully felt a shift in the air once she went through the door of her mother's home. The adults' face seemed more tense. But her nephew was as usual happy to see her. He didn't say much yet and he was still mastering the art of walking, but toddling around he jumped to her arms. Today she really needed the cuddles from his little arms. The hug around her neck was like a balm after all the emptiness of last night.  
"Hello, buddy!" She said planting a kiss on his cheek. He giggled holding her close. He had always been fascinated by her hair and gently combed his fingers through it.  
"Hi, Dana" Tara said. Kissing her too which was strange, she normally didn't greeted her like this. Now Scully knew some bad news were coming.  
"Hi Tara...Is everything okay?" She said. She frowned looking at Maggie.  
"Please, Dana sit down" She said. She noticed that Bill was not around. Also a bad sign, he usually left emotional conversations to his wife and mother.  
"Is Charlie okay?" Was the first question she could think off. Since had has been absent from family gatherings more often than not, maybe something happened to him.  
"As far as we know yes, you know he doesn't really talk to us that often." Dana nodded Matthew was playing on her lap now.  
"Bill is getting transferred," Maggie said. Tara gauge her reaction. Scully quickly figured out that it had to be far away for them to make such a big deal.  
"Where...?"  
"Germany" She tried to look calm. There was no way with the kind of work she had that she will be able to see her nephew often. Matthew had been filling the hole left by Emily in many ways even if she tried to convince herself that she was just a doting aunt. It looks like she was only fooling herself, everyone else could see it.  
"That is great. Is a great country and Matthew will learn a second language...Congratulations!" She said as enthusiastically as she could, barely able to contain the tears.  
"Thank you..." Tara said trying to reach her hand. She got up before she could touch her. She will crumble if she felt her pity on her skin.  
"I need to unpack,” she said hurrying with her bag upstairs. Once the door was closed she had a chance to shed some tears. Not too many she didn't want them to realize how sad this made her. It was actually harder than she thought she would feel. She collected herself quickly and joined the family in the living room and later to make dinner preparations. They pretended everything was fine and Scully was very grateful for it.  
She didn't flinched when she found out they will be gone right after Christmas. Bill arrived later and they had dinner. Scully did her best to mask her pain with enthusiasm, letting them talk about the move and asking pertinent questions. Even trying to challenge Bill to remember his German. He obviously forgot most of it. A few hours later it was time to put her nephew to bed.  
"Let me do it." She dared to say. It was obvious why but she didn't wanted to miss the chance, it might be the last time she got to put him on bed.  
"Sure." Tara said smiling. She held the little boy and took him to his room. She sat down and read from one of the books she bought for him. He fell asleep fast, too fast. She wanted this to last. She put it on his crib and stared at him as much as she would allow herself. She blinked some tears thinking how much she will miss him. All the feelings of her loss motherhood were twisting her inside. Scully cleaned her face when she heard steps behind her.  
"Maggie and Bill are going to bed, but I'm still not tired." Tara said still standing on the door frame.  
"Would you share a cup of tea with me?" Scully nodded.  
They both went to the kitchen where Tara set the pot and prepared the cups while Scully sat down staring at the distance looking at nothing. The silence was heavy, but she couldn't come up with anything to say. Tara didn't seem to want to speak either. The only sound was of the cups clicking with the spoons.  
"Here." Tara said serving her a cup with a tea bag in it. Scully stirred it absent-mindlessly.  
"I have always be a little intimidated by you." Tara said. Scully turned to her like her neck had springs.  
"Huh?"  
"I mean you are so educated and successful with such an exciting career. I'm just a housewife, but you risk your life in a regular basis. I wonder how can you be so strong?" Scully chuckled.  
"I'm not as strong as I wish to be..,” she said honestly.  
"But we do share something."  
"We share many things, we are family." Scully said reassuring her.  
"We both longed for children we couldn't have." Scully froze. She remembered her struggles to have her baby, but she wasn't sure she wanted to hear whatever she was going to say. She thought on leaving but her feet wouldn't move.  
"I try to make peace with God's will....Is just harder that I was expecting" She said hoping that will be enough.  
"Maybe God's will is for you not to give up." Scully frowned.  
"When my last round of IVF failed, the money was short and the chances were low. I talked to Father McCue. He reminded that in the Bible barren women are often given miracle babies, but they must pray and trust God's will. I asked God that if I wasn't meant to be a mother to remove the longing from my heart,” she said holding a fist to the center of her chest.  
"But if I was, to please give me a sign to help me to get what I needed."  
"Did you get your sign?"  
"Yes. The morning after I found a magazine with the name of a new doctor in town. He was from China and he had some new techniques that helped me."  
"Your approach is more rational that you give yourself credit for,"  
"Had you consulted more doctors after your diagnosis?"  
"I haven't...I didn't wanted to hear the bad news again."  
"Maybe it will be good news this time..." Scully took another sip.  
"Even so when the social services official was evaluating me, she pretty much declared me an unfit mother." She stirred her tea.  
"I mean you are in a stable marriage with an average life. As much as you admire my position there is a price to pay. What right do I have to bring a life into this world when there is so much uncertainty, so much danger in mine?" The images of past injuries and hospital stays. Of being shot and hit passed through her head. What if next time she will not be able to recover?  
"Dana, the world is not perfect. Our strength as women is to be able to love and raise our children under the more dire circumstances. During wars, during poverty, with absentee fathers...There is not such a thing as a perfect mother or a perfect time to have children. Don't deny yourself, just because you don't fit someone else's criteria. Half the world will be childless if only the rich and perfect were to have children. How would that help anything?" Tara's word were wise and Scully felt some relief on the idea that maybe wanting to have a child in her circumstances wasn't a stupid idea, it was a human want that she had as much right as anyone to aspire to.  
"Thank you, but then there are other complications work and my love life..."  
"It's because of Agent Mulder?" Scully almost spit her tea.  
"Agent Mulder and I are just friends..." Tara smiled.  
"I meant if he is part of the problem, with all the work he is always giving you to do?" Scully laughed.  
"Sorry, some people seem to be under the impression that Mulder and I... He is very obsessed with his work, but I can and should put some limits. I'm sure he will understand." Tara nodded.  
"I just wanted to tell you that you should keep trying for that child. I will pray for you and as you know our house is always open, if you need to get away from work for more than a weekend..."  
"Thank you" Scully said. Tara took the empty cup from her hand and put it on the dishwasher, along with hers.  
“Good night.” She said before leaving. Scully stayed in the kitchen for a second pondering what she said, still unsure what was the right thing to do. She left for her room and after getting ready for bed she prayed for God to give her a sign.


	3. YIN AND YANG (After X-Files episodes :Biogenesis, The Sixth Extinction I, The Sixth Extinction II:Amor Fati)

Agent Scully's was inside the elevator to Mulder's apartment. Last time she was here he told her words that moved her deeply. That she was her touchstone in a world upside down and in the emotion of the moment she repeated the same. But what did they meant by this? Will their friendship be forever no matter what? She liked the idea, in fact she assumed long ago that Mulder and her would never be apart and she was delighted to know he felt the same way. She decided to bring him some files to start some light work before he grew too restless and showed up to the FBI building before his medical leave was up.  
She was about to knock on Mulder's door when the door of the apartment next swong open and her heart leapt. She immediately put her hand close to her gun.  
"Hello Agent Scully!" It was just Mulder's landlord. They had run into each other before a few times.  
"Hello...Do you have a new tenant?" She asked trying to hide her interest.  
"Not yet, this floor seems to be cursed. People that live here seem to go crazy..." He opened his eyes pointing on Mulder's door. She gave him a faint smile.  
"Is he recovering well?"  
"Yes, he should be at work in no time. Just bringing some homework before that.

" She said lifting up the folder.  
"Good. I hope he gets better soon. He might have some issues but he always pay me months in advance and pays for the damages done right away. Otherwise this floor alone will get me into bankruptcy" He laughed. Scully, guessed that is why he tolerated Mulder's violent encounters and extended absences, a hefty advance payment.  
"Have a nice day!" He said locked the door behind him and left. Part of her wished he will never get another tenant next to Mulder but that was just a petty though. The chances of another psycho coming to live next to him and for him to become fixated on her were low but still safer if not. She knocked the door.  
"It's open." Mulder said.  
"Hi...How are you feeling?" Mulder was sitting in his leather couch wearing his Knicks T-shirt and some lose pants, bouncing a baseball against the wall. He still had a small band-aid in one of the holes on his skull but almost all, had healed.  
"I'm experiencing violent tendencies..,” he said keeping his eyes on the ball. Scully rolled her eyes.  
"Is just a few days Mulder. Soon you will be back to your safe workaholic heaven,” she said sitting next to him. It was interesting how relaxed she could feel in this same walls after all it happened here.  
"Meanwhile..,” she said handing him a folder. She explained to him some anomalies in the latest autopsy she made. He seemed fixated on the ball.  
"Are you listening?" She asked Mulder. That was very unlike him he usually always zeroed on the cases and spout a crazy theory before she even finished the first page.  
"Sorry...I got distracted" He looked at loss.  
"Did you team lost..again?" She said chuckling a bit. He seemed compelled to speak.  
"In that dream I told you about Samantha was alive too. In hiding with a family of her own..." His voice was monotone but she knew this was a painful subject for him.  
"That sounds lovely," Scully looked at the ball, he was still staring at it.  
"Did you played ball with her kids?" She said closing the folder giving Mulder her attention. He probably needed to talk about this more than about a case.  
"Yes and with my boys too..,” he said smiling wistfully without looking away from the sphere on his hand. Scully couldn't hide the surprise on her face.  
"You had kids?" He looked now.  
"Yes... Now I can see how it made no sense to think that was life. Time seemed to jump and the images were too colorful and senseless. I still can recall little bits like baseball games, school buses, lunches and walks in the park..." There was something upsetting about this. Imagining Mulder with a normal life with his own children. She couldn't quite picture it and didn't wanted to.  
"You think the people who had you induced this fantasy on you somehow?"  
"No...Before I became this obsessive X-Files machine that runs on paranoia I used to think that I will have a family, you know like everyone else. I haven't thought about it in years but it was still there deep down." This was painful to listen to. Will Mulder and her treated each other any differently if they had met when he wanted the same things? She couldn't believe it. It was just not him, not the man she knew and saw almost daily.  
"I thought you weren't tempted by such things?" Scully said unable to understand why something so simple, so normal made her feel so enraged. Mulder shrugged.  
"Without my sister. If I don't have any children there will be no more Mulder's. I'm the last one...” This is something Scully never considered before. It was a sad realization for her.  
“I guess that is why I imagined that if found my sister she was going be happy and loved with her own kids. Maybe I could allow myself the same thing if I knew she..." Scully's eyes were watering and Mulder felt maybe she didn't need to hear the tragedy of his life for the umpteen time.  
"We should keep working." Scully turned her attention to the paper again. Pushing aside the pain on the words Mulder just said. Why was she so upset over this?  
Mulder seemed focused this time expressing his theories that she questioned on the spot. She made some notes and promised to keep him up to date over the phone until he was back at the office. After making sure he had enough food and medications she was ready to go. She gave him a last look and found him staring at the baseball ball again.  
"Mulder..,” she said after opening the door.  
"Hmm..?"  
"I never saw you as a father before..." He nodded slightly. Scully walked out the long hallway until she was in front of the elevator. Confused, she punched the buttons. Mechanically went inside and stumbled upon her car she got inside. Instead of starting the engine she sat there for a few minutes allowing herself to deal with those feelings she had pushed aside.  
Neither of them will ever had the chance of having family. She felt the pain geysering through her throat. Why life had to be so cruel with both of them?  
Maybe Mulder could be over it, regardless if it was denial or buried so deep he didn't thought about it anymore. But she couldn't, not yet. She took a deep breath, blinking tears, she started the engine. She drove home feeling empty, the despair drilling her stomach. She made some tea and took a bath but she couldn't relax. In many ways she felt like Mulder giving up was more upsetting than she giving up. He was not like that. It was like the X-Files basement itself was barren. If Mulder never finds Samantha, and every day she was more convinced that he will never do. All this pain will be for nothing. There will be not family for him, not nephews, no children, no one. Not even a friend's child he can at least play ball once in a while with. She recalled how giving meaning to her cancer was important for her to cope with it. How can she give any meaning to what was taken from her? Taken from Mulder, from Penny, from all those other women long gone... Dealing with her barrenness was something painful but the pain can have meaning too even if just for trying.  
"I won't give up..,” she said out-loud. Tara was right she couldn't give up, not without trying harder. She wouldn't wait for the years to come and remind her on a delusional dream all she wanted and couldn't have.  
She got dressed and drove to her local bookstore. Buying, the most recent books about reproduction and infertility she found. She also got various issues of the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics. She took them home and frantically read all relevant articles. There were a lot of promising new developments and options. She probably will be advised to use donor eggs. She was not menopausal but even with her anovulatory periods the doctor said her uterus was very traumatized by the forced extraction. She remembered how he was livid and hoped that whoever did this to her will pay someday. She was also close to advanced maternal age so there was a lot to consider. The procedures will be long and painful. Reading about them alone made Scully feel weary.  
There were several articles written by Dr James Parenti. He seemed to specialize in difficult cases. Scully read that he recently joined a new group in town: Zeus Genetics. That was very fortunate. She found the number in the yellow pages and made a note to call in the morning for an appointment. Hoping he was not too booked.  
After hours of study Scully was too tired to continue. She made herself a tuna sandwich and drank some milk. She went to bed with renewed strength and hope. It felt good to be doing something, instead of pretending not to think about it and trying to fill her maternal void with work and her nephew. She prayed before going to bed asking for God's help and asking only to be a good candidate for the procedure. That will be enough, for now...


	4. ADDENDUM  (After X-Files Episode: Per Manum (Flashbacks))

Scully's mind was spinning a thousand miles per hour.  
"Mulder found my ova!" That morning she had heard the most painful words she had heard in years.  
"Dr. Scully...As you might know there is a shortage of donor eggs. As you are surely aware is infinitely a more complex process than sperm donation." Scully knew the rest couldn't be good and prepared mentally.  
"Your case is complex, even with healthy eggs your uterus has low chances for a successful implantation and then the chances of miscarriage are higher than average. I'm afraid is not ethical to try and deprive a short supply when your chances are under the standards we set ourselves. You understand that right?"  
"Sure..." She remained stoic. She knew that it was possible she was not a good candidate, still she hoped.  
"Now I still can put you on a waiting list. Some women that are successful in the first or second try sometimes donate their embryos to other women. Would you like to try that? I need to warn you is not very common and it will take time... Maybe years" She didn't really had that many options anyway.  
"I understand..." She signed her name on the sheet. She was number 21. It was going to be a long wait.  
"I also suggest you to check other clinics you might be able to find a donor faster that way. I would be more than happy to accommodate you if that happens" She nodded with no hope in her heart. Like he said donating eggs is a more arduous process and they were in short supply. She had to take a long walk where time didn't matter and getting to work didn't matter just the emptiness and the pain mattered, so she wouldn't spend all day sulking at the office. She could fake it with everyone else, but Mulder will see through her right away. For some reason she didn't wanted him to know.  
But now she had some of those ova back all thanks to Mulder.  
"Of course, Mulder found them,” she said to herself. "If someone could, it was him."  
Sure part of her was still mad at him for not telling her right away, but she understood it wasn't the right time. She probably wouldn't have even consider trying them with all that was going on.  
Mulder gave her the address of the specialist and instructions of how to retrieve her ova. It was all on her name already. He was just waiting for an opportunity to tell her about this so she could decided what to do. She called Dr Parenti's office and after explaining the situation he accepted to examine her ova as soon as she could get them to him to see if they were viable. She went the morning after to look for them herself. She could had asked for a transfer but she wanted to make sure they will arrive to the facility as fast as possible and safe along the way. More than nothing she wanted to see them, see they were real. The container was nothing she hasn't seen before with cryogenics agents to keep them frozen until they could be used. Still it felt like opening a Christmas present. She signed some release forms and took them to her specialist.  
"Are you available to wait?" Dr Parenti asked "It might be a few hours."  
"Yes, I’d rather know now..." While waiting for an answer, Scully frantically prayed and pondered the next step.


	5. THE REQUEST

Mulder felt something was off when he asked Scully the day after what was wrong.  
“Nothing” She said and continued to file some papers and collect expenses reports that needed to be sent to A.D. Skinner ASAP. His eyes were still on her back wondering about her silence. Trying to will her to tell him what she was thinking. He knew she retrieved her ova to test and she took the rest of the day off. She haven't mentioned anything about it. He was guessing it was not good news again.  
“Do you have any commitments after work today?” She addressed him, casually. It was a Friday he usually stayed late at the office so if she wanted to talk to him in private she will need to let her know beforehand.  
“No, I was going to work on some cases after you left...Why?” She looked at him directly this time.  
“I need to talk to you in private...Would you mind leaving that for later and go to your apartment instead?” He was always hard to read. He had learned to have a poker face to not let anything out before he knew it was safe. He often felt safe to show his emotions with Scully, but he wasn't letting her in this time.  
She wanted to talk to him today so he will have the weekend to think about it. Unless he had a lead he spent them at home, or go to his local sports center to shoot some hoops or run in the track field. He should be able to squeeze some time to think. She already had an appointment on Monday to get some tests done for herself. She turned on her heel. He gave her a knowing look with those big eyes that had made her break the rules more times that she could count.  
Today she felt intimidated. She was going to ask him something he might not be willing to give and Scully had no idea how their relationship will change after the words escaped her mouth. She was willing to take that risk, but she was still worried of what it will unravel.  
“Okay” He said. She tried to act normal for the rest of the day.  
Most of the files that day seemed unexplained but after a careful review they were crimes that didn't need their intervention. She send them upstairs where they will be sent to the appropriated agents. Mulder turned off his computer and left without saying anything. He usually say good-bye or a quick joke before stepping out, but this time he knew she will follow him.

The drive was nerve-wracking. She let him have a head start so he could have some time to sit and wait. Mostly she was trying to calm her nerves. She knocked his door as she usually did unless she had a reason to use her key.  
“It's open,” he said. He was already out of his suit. He hated those things the only reason he wore them was because of the FBI dress code. He was wearing a light gray pullover and jeans.  
“Do you want anything to drink?” He said.  
“Diet Soda” She said sitting on the couch. He brought her a bottle and brought a beer for himself. She drank a big sip quickly, he sat down in silence waiting for her to start.  
“I wanted to talk to you about what happened with my ova.” His eyes suddenly filled with sadness. At this point they had endured so much together. He leaned closer and put his hand over Agent's Scully hand.  
“What did the doctor say, Dana?” He said her name only when he felt she was at the edge of the abyss. He was the only man she let herself be vulnerable with. She knew in her bones he wouldn't use it against her, saw her as lesser. She was so thankful for that, being able to work and still be herself such a luxury she couldn't afford in previous years. She took another sip.  
“Actually, he said that there is a good chance they are viable...” He let go a long sight. He combed his dark hair with both hands, a wide smile breaking on his face.  
“That is wonderful news!” He was happy for her. He leaned back and took a sip of his bottle.  
“He wants to start right away...” She added, hoping he will ask more.  
“It will look great in your dating site profile. Ready to have your baby!” He said a wry smile on his face. She chuckled. He always made her laugh.  
“He suggested genetic counseling, to find a sperm donor of my choice...” A small gesture of surprise crossed his face.  
“Oh that is less fun...” He seemed slightly confused. It never occurred to him that Scully might want to be a single mother.  
“Is not like I have many choices.” Scully said guessing his thoughts. She recalled again with pain the words of the adoption official and the doctor's. An unfit adoptive mother and a poor candidate for a biological one. A brief fear took her brain. Should she even try? She bit her lip with some bitterness.  
“... I'm doing my best with what I have...” He nodded. She thought she saw some sadness in his eyes too. Scully took another sip scared of what she was going to say next.  
“But there is something it doesn't feel quite right about the anonymous donor route. I can ask for a genetic profile to rule out genetic diseases. Choose hair, eye color, IQ, height....but there are so many other things we cannot test for; personality, quirks...” She was rubbing her wrists in anticipation. He didn't interrupt.  
“I wish I can choose those things for my child...Things that cannot be measured, courage, loyalty, passion...” She looked up seeing if he understood where she was going with this.  
“Are you having doubts?” Wrong conclusion, although entirely logical.  
“No, is not that. Is just that I want to have a baby with a man I know. Someone I could ask for medical information if needed without having to go through mountains of paperwork. Also someday he or she will ask who his father was and I would like to be able to say he was a good friend of mine.” He frowned.  
“I don't follow.” Typical Mulder he could leap to every conclusion but the obvious one.  
“What I mean is that I would like you to be the sperm donor.” His face froze. He stared at Scully in silence for what it felt like a century. Her heart rate accelerated.  
“I...don't know what to say...” His eyes were still on her.  
“Understandable. I was surprised myself when I reached to the logical conclusion. I mean I had known you for almost seven years now and you are my closest male friend... It only made sense... to me.” He still said nothing.  
“And I understand if you have objections. I brought you some material to read more about your role. How is the procedure done, the legal protection for donors...” She handed it a folder with information from Zeus Genetics about the details. He took it but his eyes never looked at them. He was still staring at her. His mind still processing what she was asking. Me? Of all men in the world me? The man who has hurt her the most? Me? His loser chasing aliens coworker? Me? The man who drove her insane half the time and put her in danger the other half? Me? Fox Mulder?  
“Is this related to the conversation we have about that dream...because I can assure you...”  
“I would had asked you anyway...” Scully was confident that it was just the sign for her to pursue. Mulder still was paralyzed on the idea that there was anything logical about this.  
“I would totally understand if you don't want to do it. I just wanted to ask first.” Scully finished her drink, put on her coat on and approached the door.  
“I will be staying at home all weekend so if you could make your choice by Monday that would be great.” She opened the door and left, half hoping Mulder will stop her to tell her he didn't need to think it any longer. But of course he didn't, this was a big decision.  
The drive home wasn't long but, she still felt like she drove to the end of the world. She checked the answering machine as soon as she saw it had the light on when she got home. Her brother Bill and her mother were the only ones that called.  
Mulder didn't call that night. Scully was awake most of it. Wondering what was he thinking. She finally felt asleep in the early hours of the morning and woke up around noon, still not call. She focused on reading some books. Some were histology and rare genetic conditions, some others were about pregnancy. She made a list of the kind of foods she should be consuming. The things she should avoid and tried to guess when she will need maternity leave if she was successful.  
She also wondered if her mom will understand why she was going to keep the name of the father of the child secret. She wondered how many people at work will think Mulder is the father. Will the kid look so much like him that she will never have pictures in her wallet? She was sure Skinner will know Mulder was the father the second she announced the pregnancy.  
She knew better than indulge herself on the idea of being pregnant, actually carrying a child inside her and be able to give birth and hold it on her arms, specially with her odds. But she couldn't stop herself from the daydreams of the future. She imagined where the crib will go in her room and thought about what colors she will I need. Green and yellow for sure she didn't want to know the sex.  
"All I want is a healthy child" She tried to look at herself in the mirror imagining her belly growing.  
She felt discouraged when she didn't hear from Mulder the entire Saturday or the following Sunday. She guessed that he was going to say no and was thinking how to sugarcoat it. Monday came and before breakfast the phone rang. Mulder called. He let her know he was going to stop by to talk in person. She felt that was also a sign of bad news. He wouldn't just let her down over the phone. It was not his style.  
Mulder's brain had spent all weekend processing her request. Why he of all people? He always assumed Scully saw him at best, as an annoying big brother and at worst as a toddler she had to babysit. But she obviously had to think better of him if she wanted to raise a child that was his. Is possible she might think of him as something more? He didn't allow himself to ask those questions. He didn't want to. He remembered that he was delusional. After all she asked for the minimum involvement he could have on this child. The paperwork she brought him included forms to relinquish paternal rights so this was just something she wanted for herself. There was some sadness in that: she knew he could never be a father, not the kind she wanted. But that did made more sense. After all she at least have a genetic history handy in case something happened. Yeah that sounds like Scully. He was going to say yes anyway, but needed to make peace with the idea that it didn't mean anything else. If anything this might be what she needed to get out of his life and of The X-Files. Once she had a child to take care of she won't be running across the country to assist him in another dead-end lead. He was surprisingly okay with that. He wanted the best for her and the best was never him or the X-Files. It was good to see that he would at least help her to get out. As sad as it was to see her go. He wondered if she already realized that. That things will change.  
She showered and dressed. After a few minutes she heard the familiar knock in the door. Scully felt her heart in her throat.  
She took a deep breath and opened the door. Asked him for his coat but he said he needed to go back to the office. Probably to work on whatever he couldn't on Friday. Bad sign too. He wasn't planning on staying.  
The way he answered felt like a nice let down like when someone says “Is not you, is me”. Like she never heard that one before.  
But to her surprise he said yes. Her heart sang with gratitude. She hug him and he made a crass joke about his experience with donor procedures and left.  
Scully had to sit to calm down, overjoyed and full of hope. Things might work out after all. Now it was a long wait. The procedure will take some weeks to prepare tests, pills, check-ups.  
Mulder signed in with an anonymous number, not even the doctor will know who the donor was and they both made the pact of never mentioning what they were planning unless there was something important to discuss and when that happened they would meet in the most absolute privacy. Keeping the baby's paternity secret was too important to risk it. The Bureau already had enough reasons to discredit The X-Files adding conflict of interest will just give them what they wanted. And of course Mulder's enemies would love to have some way to control him. No one should know.


	6. WAITING PERIOD (After X-Files Episode: The Unnatural)

Dr Parenti sent a written letter to Scully to set a date for the implantation. She took another day from work and went alone to avoid raising suspicions. She was asked to go back to his office two weeks later for a pregnancy test. Scully was tempted to test herself first, but didn't want to jinx it.   
Mulder came by the day of the test before she left to wait for the results in her apartment. They had a late lunch together.  
“Do you want a boy or a girl?” He asked.   
“I want a human chorionic gonadotropin positive.”   
“That is a weird name for the baby.” She snickered.  
“I'm trying to not get my hopes too high. Getting pregnant is just the first step.” She paused, Scully hated to talk to Mulder about this.  
“The truth is I might need a miracle to be able to bring this child to term....” She wanted to be realistic with him for the sake of both. He reached to grab her hand.  
“Scully, I'm sure...”  
“Are you?” She said, her eyes boring into him. He didn't answer.  
“Mulder, this journey I'm about to start is probably the most frightening I had ever been in. My abduction, my cancer...all of them were nothing compared to the pain I felt when I lost Emily.” Her blue eyes almost filled with tears. He rubbed her fingers.  
“I don't think I will believe is happening until I have my baby on my arms. Happy, safe and healthy...And as your friend I think you should do the same in the months to come.”  
“Scully...”  
“If I can spare you any of that kind of pain I would like to try."   
"I don't want you to be alone in this...I know you don't need anything else from me, but I still want to be supportive." Scully took his hand on hers. His eyes filled with gratitude.  
"What I need is you to be my anchor, my rock, my touchstone. I will be able to deal with it better that way, in case...” She choked up the words. He inhaled deeply, nodding. If she was successful these months will be behind them as soon as the baby will be born. Then they could have hope to spare for a long time.  
"...You are going to be a fantastic mother,” he said his eyes bright and open. Scully felt her heart leaping.  
“Thank you, I hope you are right.”   
“When I had been wrong?” Scully side eyed him.  
“Hey! I don't just trust my seed to just any of the million of women that keep asking.” They both laughed.  
“I appreciate your words but I'm not sure if I deserve them just yet...” There was a part of Scully that felt she was not ready, or worthy but she didn't have the choice to wait anymore. It was now or never.  
“Of course you do.” He paused “Not only because of who you are which already give this kid an enviable head start in life, but also Mrs Scully...Maggie the best mom I had ever met and by the way you talk about your dad is obvious he was a great man.” This was even more surprising, Mulder didn't spend that much time with her family. He continued.  
“And Melissa in the brief time I knew her I could tell she was the most loving, wise sister.” She smiled at the thought of Melissa, a bittersweet smile. She was not here to see this. She would have been so happy for her, for both.  
“...And as much as your brother Bill hates my guts he does it because he is looking out for you. I would probably do the same on his position...” Agent Mulder remembered her sister and how he wished he could had been a big brother to her during all of her life. Maybe they will still have some time left for that when he finds her. He suppressed the thoughts for the moment. this was Scully's time and she needed all his attention.  
“Mulder, thank you for the Rockwellian vision. But I can assure you we have problems, beyond whatever my work has brought in. My baby brother Charles had been absent a lot lately. Ever since dad died he has kept his distance."   
“I know, I know. But like you said before those are problems normal decent people have.” He sighted “My dad was part of the conspiracy that abducted my sister and my mother did nothing to stop him from taking her own daughter...Can you imagine Maggie letting anyone take any of her kids? I pity the soul that tries.” She couldn't say anything to that. Mulder tried not to think too much on that. He avoided anything that reminded him of the family he got stuck with.  
“So I should thank you for giving the last Mulder a chance to be part of a normal family.” His eyes were turning red. It was harder than he wanted to admit. Maybe that is why he accepted long ago he will never had children. With parents like his it would be a miracle if he wouldn't screw his kid even more than how they screwed him.  
“Mulder...don't...”   
“Am I lying?” He interrupted. His eyes were dark and serious. She paused trying to measure her words.  
“Regardless of your family actions. You are a good man.” He shook his head. Scully took his hand.  
“No, no, you are. And you had always being there for me when I needed you. Like you are now. A great friend, a great man and a great agent. There are a lot of good things this kid will have from you too.” Suddenly Mulder remembered that hall years ago when he first noticed how much Scully meant to him. He suppressed the cascade of feelings that came during that time. He knew he shouldn't feel that way and he knew Scully didn't saw him that way. He pull everything back and she didn't even noticed it. Practice make perfect.   
“And really, I'm sure the kid will need someone who show him bad movies and how to stab the ceilings with pencils. God knows that won't be me.” He snorted, release showering his face.   
Scully hope that Mulder choose be part of the child's life in some capacity. She even thought on naming him William if it was a boy in honor to his father. She could tell everyone that he was named after her own father, so they won't suspect.  
But she didn't want to talk about these things with him just yet. She needed to have something tangible for him, for both of them to hold onto. For both of them to love.  
“I have to go now. In any case just think that you are going to be part of the family now too....Much to Bill's chagrin.” That surely seemed to cheer him up. At some point maybe when she was not working on The X-Files anymore she was planning of telling. Her brother won't be happy at the beginning but she was sure he will put the family first as he always did and embrace him. Especially if he had to thank him for a new addition. He knew first hand how hard was to have a child and if Mulder helped he wouldn't be able to hate him...much.  
Scully left Mulder waiting for her in the couch. In a few hours we will see how things were going to change for us.


	7. A PRAYER

“It was my last chance!”  
Scully said to Mulder tears falling heavy on her cheeks. She felt hurt, betrayed; by her body, by science, by God. Mulder patiently held her and let her cry on his shoulder as he often did.   
“Never give up on a miracle.” he said. Scully was thankful for his words, but it was an empty phrase. He didn't believe in God or his mercy and today neither did she. She took a deep breath holding onto him for a second. Their forehead's resting on each other in a familiar comforting touch.   
“That is only if God thinks I'm worthy of a miracle, Mulder,” she said looking at his face searching for his answer. He remained silent, poker face again.  
“I had prayed so much and he didn't listen maybe I...” He touched her lips.  
“Shhh...You don't believe that,” he said. Scully composed myself a bit more, enough so their words sounded clear.  
“I'm not trying to blaspheme against, God,” she said drying out her tears with the back of her hand.  
“After all He answered many of my prayers before. When you were missing, when I was sick. Maybe that is the problem I already got my fair share of miracles and I was pushing it by asking one more...” With so much suffering they had witnessed in the world it was hard to argue that He should keep blessing her in that way.  
Mulder wrapped his arms around her again. The pain came back and with it more tears. She needed another minute to compose herself.  
“Do you want a cup of tea?” She asked walking to the kitchen. He exhaled a yes and sat back down. Scully brought the hot drinks and they sat down in silent conversation. Neither of them wanting to say anything. But sharing on the pain of the losses of hopes and dreams. She kept her head on his shoulder. The sobs slowly turning into silent heavy tears. Neither of them moving or talking. Just staring into the room like they could see ahead the empty future waiting for them. The light day slowly dying and the darkness of the night covering the apartment. When it got too dark and Scully's tears had dried up she turned on a lamp.  
"Is getting late...You should get some sleep," She said, her voice barely audible.  
"Right..." Mulder said standing up and putting up his jacket.  
"Are you sure you are going to be okay?" He said not higher than she. It was like both wanted to keep their pain a secret. From the world and even from each other.  
"I will be fine." She never felt worst or more alone. But she knew Mulder will respect her wishes even if she didn't mean them.   
"I guess I will see you tomorrow...Call me if you need to talk." He simply said. Slowly walking towards the door. Scully felt a shiver down her spine. She knew she was going wallow in misery as soon as he left.   
"Mulder...I really don't want to be alone tonight..,” she said without looking at him. Embarrassed of her admission. He closed the distance between them and lifted her face with the tip of his index.  
"Me neither" Scully saw her pain on his face. She surrounded him his head heavy on her shoulder. She felt some tears shedding from his face. It was his turn to cry.  
"I know you don't blame me and I promise I'm working my best to get over it, but I still feel this is all my fault. Just let me tell you how sorry I am, how very sorry I am for all that was done to you Scully. For all you have lost If I could only erase away all this pain if I could find a way to make you happy I would. " Scully didn't corrected or tried to ask him to stop. She just held him. They cried together for all the tragedy and pain they had endured for years. For the child they will never have.   
Once both felt slightly less heavy by the burden of their shared loss. Scully looked at him.  
"Did you brought an overnight bag?" He shook his head.  
"I think I have some old pajamas that you might fit in," She said. She found some pants that were too big for her and she forgot to return and big T-shirt and after brushing her teeth and getting her own pajamas. She gave it to Mulder.  
"Got you a new toothbrush too,” she said and gave it to him. While he was changing she got some extra sheets and a pillow and tried to make her coach look more comfortable. He found the setting amusing. Scully had to suppress a laugh at the look of Mulder's ill-looking night ensemble.   
"Next time we have a Pajama party I hope you have something in my color..,” he said making Scully burst laughing in spite of everything.  
"You know I don't need all this,” he said pointing at the makeshift bed.  
"Oh I know but I thought it would be rude and it kept me busy...My brain is not my best friend tonight,” she said. He held her again for a few minutes.   
"Can you come to the bed with me...?" He didn't say anything. She led him to the bed with an arm around her shoulder. He helped her in and covered her with the sheets,  
“Thank you” he sat down in the floor, leaning his back to the mattress. Just like the first night they spent together when they were working on their first case. She closed her eyes trying to not think so she might fall sleep.  
"Scully..,” he said, his voice soft.   
“Can I...Can I pray with you?” She opened her eyes to see if this was another joke. He seemed sincere.  
“I know I'm probably the last person the big guy will want to help but...I'm part of this already maybe he needs me to ask him too...?” He shrugged. Scully was so moved. He was trying to reach a higher power he didn't believe in just for her. Unable to say anything else she got out of bed and kneel and he followed her lead. They were in front of each other. Their heads touching lightly.   
Scully was feeling his sweet breath fanning in her face. She never notice before how good he smelled. He was not wearing cologne thought, it was just the natural scent of his skin. She saw him close his eyes, a gesture of reverence she never imagine him doing. She closed hers thinking on a new prayer.   
She thanked The Lord for all he had done for them so far. For bringing Mulder into her life. In spite of everything it was a better just because he was in it. She also asked for him to gift them with a way for them to have a child together. She had no idea what to expect. Maybe they will find out more stored ova. The conspiracy could have backups somewhere. She opened her eyes and he was still praying. His lips moving slowly, his eyes still closed. She couldn't help but stare at his beautiful face. He looked breathtaking. He opened his eyes.   
“Amen” She said clumsily. He smiled and repeated, the same word. She went back under the covers and Mulder rested his back on the edge of the bed.  
"Thank you for praying with me..,” she said, he nodded. "I think I can sleep now so if you want to try to go to the couch and get some sleep that will be okay."  
"You sure?" She nodded and he kissed her cheek before leaving.  
"Call me if you need anything." She felt lighter now a sense of well-being filling up the sadness and without another word she closed her eyes and quickly fell asleep.


	8. A BRAND NEW DAY

Scully's alarm woke her up at 6 am.   
"Mulder" She called and she only heard silence. Mulder had folded the sheets and put the pajamas in the laundry room and even had put coffee on the machine for her. He let a post-it note in her cup.  
"See you at work!"  
Scully showered and got ready for work. She was strangely happy. Her mind just looking forward to see Mulder again. Which was curious since Mulder and her already spend more than enough time together, why was she so excited about a daily occurrence?   
Everything seemed slightly different today. The coffee tasted better, maybe Mulder added something to it? Her skin felt softer and the sky seemed bluer. The sun warm and brighter. It was a great day for some reason. It was like last night all the sadness slipped away in her tears. She found a song in the radio of her car and sang along. All the time thinking about Mulder and imagining what the day will bring for both.  
When she walked across the door she saw him. She had done this a thousand times before, but today her heart leapt. A strange sensation in the pit of her stomach took over her and she smiled for no reason.  
"Good morning" Mulder beamed back at her.   
"Good morning!" He answered. He kept his eyes on her as she walked towards the desk and sat down his lips slightly parted. Was she imagining this?  
She tried to calm herself down, but there was something about him this morning that made her feel a pull towards him.   
"Did you slept well last night?" She asked waiting for an answer. He hesitated a second, biting his lips sideways. She liked that gesture too much today. What was he thinking?   
"...Yes...you?"   
"Yes..,” she said taking a deep breath. Both of them chuckled for no reason. She cleared her throat.  
"Any new case?" She said. There was something different about everything today. She wondered what was it. Today it seemed that the office was smaller, they kept leaning on each other, brushing their limbs while examining folders and paperwork. Every time they got closer it seemed like the static in the room was ignited and the draw they both felt intensified. They were often driven to each other presences, they have for years, but this was not an intellectual need to debate or a psychological need to prove the other wrong. Not a mental exercise to solve a case. Neither worry for their safety and well-being.   
This was magnetism, primal, instinctual. Every cell of their skin was electrified. Scully noticed that Mulder's intensity was more focused on her. The way his eyes lingered on her lips, how he leaned in close enough that she could smell him. Was she imagining it? Was he always looking at her like this and she only saw it now? It was like a switch has been flicked somewhere inside her.   
Mulder had noticed the change earlier. He woke up one hour before her. He also felt a lightness in his spirit. A sensation unlike of the pain of the night before and a day that seemed more dazzling than every other morning. Like a veil had been lifted from his eyes. He folded the sheets, put on his clothes and put on the coffee for Scully. Then he went to make sure she was still asleep before he left her.   
It was like he saw her for the first time. She was always aware that Scully was an attractive woman and he had seen her sleep dozens of times; in cars during stakeouts, or chairs, on the bed when they had to share rooms in fact he joked that she could fall sleep anywhere. But this morning just looking at her while she was peacefully in Morpheus's arms was different. The way her face was slightly flushed, her lips parted, the strand of her hair falling on her forehead. He got closer, carefully removed the loose lock from her face with one finger. Her skin felt like silk and a current of electricity ran on his index. She sighed, but kept sleeping. He could feel the warmth of her body and a sweet scent irradiating from her figure. Without warning a spellbinding impulse to kiss her lips overcame him. Barely aware he leaned in. When his face was inches from hers, he stood up, unsettled.   
He was not supposed to feel this way. Scully needed a friend now more than ever, this was not a friendly act on his part. He left before he did something he will surely regret. It was not the first time his body had betrayed the deeper desires of his soul. He already tried to kiss her once, in the heat of a moment, an impulse he later labeled hormone-driven. Scully never talked about their near kiss or gave him any indication that this was the path she wanted their relationship take. He imagined she was relieved he never brought the subject again. No awkward talks or clumsy explanations. The drive to his apartment was unnerving. He could always push these ideas back, so deep inside he would forget they were even there. He wouldn't allow himself to think of it, with his obsessive nature and photographic memory it was dangerous to him and to Scully to let himself fantasize too much about what was not meant to be.   
He went home and took a shower as cold as he could tolerate. He felt better afterward—more in control, calm. He could move on from this, he had to. While he was shaving he reminded himself how disastrous it would be if he were to say something. He could see Scully's reactions in his mind. Sometimes she was sweet, compassionate, maternal:  
"Oh Mulder... This is why I wanted you to try to have a life outside the X-files. I was afraid that without any other emotional connection this was might happen...I'm so sorry I would never want to hurt you, but you know you are like a brother to me. I think we should try to take some distance from each other. Is better that way." Sometimes she was sarcastic, mocking.  
"Really, Mulder? This is quite possibly the craziest idea you ever had. We are different people, with different goals. I think maybe we are spending too much time together...I will be taking a long vacation maybe meet someone. You should try the same I'm sure you can met some paranoid girl who believes in aliens if you really try." Sometimes she was furious, hurt.  
"What the hell Mulder?! I gave you the best years of my life. I lost my health for you, my friends, my family, my reputation, almost my life and that is not enough? You still want more? You want to take away my hopes of a normal life with a man who could give it to me? I did all this for you because I trusted you, because I thought I was safe with you but I was wrong. You are not a man in a quest to save the world you are a selfish bastard. A black hole that wants to consume the few good things I still have for myself...I can't take this anymore... I QUIT?!"   
The only rational response Scully could have to his feelings was leaving at once. He couldn't lose Scully, he just couldn't. He couldn't live without her now. He switched back to the reality of the friendship he convinced himself was more than enough, dressed for work and left apartment 42 and went to the FBI.  
He was first as usual and he got ready to start his day. Normally thinking about Scully's questions over the evidence helped him to put his feelings back where they belong. He was then able to treat Scully professionally and friendly just as it was meant to be.  
But today when Scully opened the door to the basement office. None of his careful mental restraints resisted her sight. She had the same irresistible glow he saw on her when she was on her bed. Her face blinding him removing those emotions that at this point should be buried. The fire on his being burned hotter than before. The intense awareness of her presence grew stronger, impossible to ignore. He tried to focus on something else but the way her smile seemed to dance on her face and how he couldn't help but smile back for no reason was distracting him from this goal. He also felt the office was smaller; their bodies, coming in casual contact more often. Her hips seemed to always find a way to brush against him. Was she always like this? He did his best to act normal. It seemed after a few minutes both of them were interacting as usual, but the change in the air still hung in the background. A life force vibrant, warm, intoxicating. They both secretly hoped this was just a play of this strange new day and everything will be back to normal tomorrow or the day after but soon.


	9. DESIDERIUM (During and After The X-Files Episodes: Three of a kind, Field Trip, Hungry.)

They were wrong. It was more than a moment, it lasted more than a day. Something definitely changed between them. Scully had seen Mulder's body for years with the coldness of her knowledge of human anatomy. Sure he was fit and tall, sure he was cute but now his presence affected her. She felt emotions when she was around him she never felt before. Reactions unlike she ever had. The quickening on her pulse at the sound of his voice, the tingling on her nose when she caught the lingering scent of his skin. This automatic smile the second she saw his face. And how he smiled back without any reason for it. Were these feelings new? Or where they hid where she wouldn't have to face them before? Why now? Why like this?   
Every time she bumped into him given the small space in the basement a new wave hit her. In the past this was at best neutral at worst, annoying but she was enjoying the closeness now. Even happier of not having her own desk in the basement so they have more chances of be close to each other. A spark ignited her heart every time they touched.   
Mulder was doing a great effort not to do something that will give away his thoughts. Distracting himself with a case or sputtering a new trivia. Consciously turning away every time she stood up to file something or reach for the top of the shelves. She was his coworker, he needed to respect her. See her as colleague. But from the corner of his eye, without wanting to, he could see the way the curve of her hips was accentuated in her pencil skirt. How her legs touched each other while she read the files for a case before placing them back on the cabinet. How she bit her lips absent-mindlessly. How crossing her arms across her chest slightly lifted her breasts. When he wasn't hyper vigilant of his movements he will catch himself touching her hand to grab a document when it was obviously not needed or moving a strand of hair from her face... He will clear his throat to focus on something else. Scully always gave her this puzzle look with a small smile, almost an invitation. But he knew it was just his imagination playing tricks on him. His sunflower seeds became the only way his mouth could curve the cravings for Scully's lips.  
"You are going through your seeds, faster than usual..." Scully said holding an empty bag from his desk. There were several already on the trash can. She lifted her eyebrow inquisitively. For a moment there he was scared she guessed why. He looked to the bag and shrugged. She pouted with her eyebrow frowning slightly. She was just so tempting like that. He looked away before he said something that will give away his thoughts. He felt her go to the trash can and throw away the container. He waited until she was out of the office to get a new one from the bottom drawer of his desk.   
He thought to himself that he was being an idiot and needed to stop it. Scully was not stupid, she was going to keep noticing little changes on his behavior and then she was going to leave when she will figure out why. Probably wouldn't even say good-bye. Still he couldn't help but focus on those little moments when he felt she might actually not be too upset over this. When in fact he felt she wanted to be closer to him. Those days her fingers casually brushed his arm. Or her hand touched his arm to grab his attention. Or when she was leaning in to show him a document and her hair reached just under the tip of his nose and he breathe in the essence of her locks. He even imagined that she leaned in closer to soak on his scent too while he intoxicated himself with her natural fragrance. His stupid brain was telling him this, he reminded himself that it made no sense for Scully to be attracted to him after all their story together and Scully if she had anything asides from beauty and brains, was sense.   
He recommitted to keep his professional behavior at all times, but Scully could swear there was something else coming from his side too. From the corner of her eye he could see him some times when it seemed he was absent-mindlessly looking at her general direction she could swear his eyes were on her. Mulder always had a poor sense of personal space but, she felt that now it was more recurrent, more times when she found herself close to his chest, tempted to lay her hands on it. Or he seemed to find excuses to touch her hand, lead her with the small of her back out of the office or inside a building. Now when she was talking about something he will take a few microsecond to respond, almost like he was thinking on something else while his eyes were looking at her face. Before she thought this was just his way of being playful, but there was a spark on his eyes that wasn't there before or that she couldn't see. What could he be feeling? Does he see her as more than a friend? Or as she always suspected, she was just a replacement for the sister he lost? This possibility pained her.   
The weeks had been quiet at work not many X-files mostly paperwork. Christmas week came and Mulder promised himself to let her celebrate with her family in peace. He knew this was the last Christmas she will have with Matthew. This time they promised not to interchange presents and made sure to keep the promise. Scully tried to hide her disappointment when he kept his word and didn't interrupted her celebrations. But he knew Mulder was not going to ruin things for her.   
Her nephew spent a lot of time with her. Charlie sent presents and called over the phone, but didn't showed up. But all the cousins and aunts and uncles had a great time. Scully was surprised that even though she will miss her nephew her thoughts were most of the time with Mulder. She hope that whatever Mulder did this Christmas he was having a good time.  
Mulder actually spent Christmas Eve and the morning after at the Lone Gunmen. A guys' night out with his crazy friends might be what he needed to get over this renewed fixation on someone who he could never have. The guys noticed he was different but they gave him his space. They watched movies, played some games and interchanged some presents. It was a nice distraction for all of them. Forget for a day or two that the world they lived in was horrible, aliens were coming to destroy the little good left. And to forget their own government was accomplice. They even left a Christmas message for Skinner in his phone. He at least will have a laugh when he heard it.   
But when he was not distracted, Mulder wondered about Scully. He kept stopping himself from finding excuses to call her and succeeded. The guys would know exactly what was going on if they saw his face once he could hear her voice. That was a strong enough motivation to keep him from calling her from their den.  
But once alone in his apartment he still felt this painful longing. He disconnected his phone. Tried to distract himself with some porn, but he just couldn't even watch it anymore.   
He looked for more sunflower seeds bags, but he had eaten them all. He will have to wait until tomorrow to buy more at the store. Defeated he drop himself on his new bed and tried to get some sleep. But his overacting brain was not letting him rest.   
"Maybe I should just kiss her..." Maybe complete denial just made things worse. A kiss might just take the edge of this obsession. It wasn't such a crazy idea. Sometimes getting a new piece in his pursuit of the truth helped give him a mental break. But wasn't kissing Scully a deep act of disrespect? Wouldn't she hate it? Leave?   
He knew exactly how she will react. She told him years ago.   
After he broke into her house to find Eddie Van Bluth almost planting one on her. He was racing, horrified of the idea of what he could do to her. He was sure he slipped something on all those women drinks to make them unable to see their husband's strange behavior. He came in time, Scully was horrified when she realized what went on.  
"Are you okay?" He asked, quickly feeling relief that the scene didn't indicated anything more has happened.  
"Yes..." Scully said slightly slurry. He handcuffed the man. He offered no resistance.  
"Did he gave you something? Do I need to call an ambulance?" Scully seemed more embarrassed than anything.  
"No, Mulder just wine. The bottle was...sealed...I just...drank most of it..." He took her phone.  
"I"m calling the authorities..."   
"I think I'm going to be sick" She said, sitting again her hands on her stomach. Eddie kept quiet he probably knew his rights by heart now. By the time the police arrived Scully was drinking as much water as possible.  
"This will help... me counteract the effects... of the alcohol..." Mulder nodded. He was giving details of the arrest to the police  
"Mulder I really thought he was you...But you... I mean him were acting so strange..." She shrugged at the thought. He nodded. Mulder went to give instructions to the police for a second and came back.  
"Scully, do you recall any doctor that can get us a prescription for a muscle relaxer at this late hour?" He asked her.  
"I can do it..,” she said trying to stand, but losing balance. Mulder caught her by the elbows.  
"Or maybe I can't..." She asked Mulder for a pen and paper and she wrote something in it. One unit took Eddie and made sure to have him escorted with two policemen as guards, sitting next to him.   
"Are you going to be okay?" Mulder asked before leaving.  
"Yeah...I will be fine in a few hours" He left and did all the regulatory paperwork and made sure Eddie was given the medication that will keep him from tricking anyone else.  
The day after, Scully was mortified.  
"I had no idea how I couldn't tell it wasn't you, it was so obvious..."   
"Is okay Scully, this man was able to do this to women married to the men he was impersonating for years...Nothing to be embarrassed about."   
"I guess...I just thought you were having a bad day and wanted some sympathy...I should had know you would never..." He didn't wanted to think on the end to that sentence. He would never be stupid enough to think that she wanted him? He would never had the guts?  
"I mean I thought that ... It was the alcohol making you..." She trailed off.  
"Were you going to slap me next? Because that would have been hilarious, Eddie would had changed back in a second,” he said trying to sound cheerful.  
"Mulder! I would never inflict physical violence on you..." She was stopped by Mulder's clear side eye reminding her of the time she shoot him.  
"...Unless it was needed for your protection. I would had tell you to you weren't thinking clearly, offer you a cup of coffee and figured out what was going on with you." He found this puzzling.  
"You wouldn't had been murderously mad?" She shrugged.  
"For a little kiss?...In a moment of weakness?" She wondered if Mulder thought she was going to blush and faint over something so inconsequential. Typical Catholics are prude stereotype.   
"Now in the remote case you wouldn't have stopped. I will had put that black on eye for sure." She lifted her tiny left fist and smiled. He chuckled at that.  
The new year was coming maybe he could find a way to ring the year together. That was not a family holiday for her, she usually watched the ball fall on TV and fell asleep watching a movie. He could stop by for a few minutes. They were plenty of X-Files he needed to discuss and she knew he had no concept of time. He could go, see the countdown and just kiss her.  
"A little friendly kiss" He could say is tradition, after all they had never spent the Eve together so she didn't knew. She will shrug it and file it under Mulder's weird behavior and he will leave as soon as possible.   
"Then we will never speak of it" It will mean nothing for her, but the world for him. There was a part of him that died at the thought, but he knew it was for the best. With a plan to hold onto he finally fell sleep.


	10. KISS THE GIRL (During and After X- Files episode Millennium)

The last days of the year they were assigned to a new case. It was related to the Millennium group. They haven't seen each other since before Christmas so he wished her Merry Christmas when he was examining the recently open grave that lead to the first clue of the case. He hoped she couldn't hear on his voice that he had thought about her all that time and missed her like crazy.  
Back in the hole it was easier for Scully to pretend his partner was nothing more than that, but when he wished her Merry Christmas her heart leapt with gratitude knowing that he didn't forgot. She wanted to tell him that she missed him, but bit her lip and inquired about the case.   
According to Mulder this time involved necromancers. She deemed it tomb desecration. They found out an agent that could help them checked himself in a mental institution to gain custody of his daughter. The case ended up with Scully having a close encounter with a walking dead thankfully thwarted by the necromancer. Mulder got the worst part, though. His shoulder was injured, but with the help of Mr. Black things resolved before there were more innocent victims, and before Mulder ended up in worst shape.   
Mulder was checked out and they both were ready to go home. Scully got distracted with the video of the new year's ball falling. She almost forgot that it was midnight already. People were celebrating a new stage of their lives. Scully for a second lost herself thinking about what they new year might bring.   
Mulder didn't predicted it was going to be like this, considered if he should. Was he willing to wait an entire year for another chance? Could he? It was now or never.  
Scully felt Mulder's head turning towards her. She thought for a second he wanted to say something, but she was pleasantly surprised when his lips touched hers, like it was the most natural thing in the world. The heat irradiating from their lips made its way towards all their senses. Awakening even more of those needs buried under years of work, cases, autopsies, fears, denial and frustrations. A kiss long enough to be more than just a welcoming of the year, more than kissing a friend for tradition's sake. A kiss that had the promise of being the first one of many.   
Mulder's plans crumbled under the weight of her lips molding to his. He didn't expected this. She was responding like he never could imagine she would. Was it possible that there was any hope for him? That maybe, maybe he was not just the annoying big brother, or the pesky co-worker she put up with. Is it possible that she maybe wanted him the same way? Can life be that good to him?  
He was feeling the impulse of deepening the kiss, take her on his arms, hold her closer... This was not the right place or moment. His mind was reeling with all the possibilities when both felt that they should stop before the kiss became even more than it was.   
Their eyes still locked on each other. Mulder smiled his heart full of hope and wonder, Scully responded, her eyes playful, inviting.   
“The world didn't end..,” he said trying to sound nonchalant. But a new world was just beginning for him and hopefully for her.  
“No, it didn't..,” she said. Maybe that is what she thought it will happen if they ever crossed this line. The world will end.  
The thoughts of the possibilities were racing in their minds. Mulder wished her a happy New Year and she did the same. He put his hand over her shoulder and walked towards the car. They didn't say anything on the way.   
Since he was injured she took the driver's seat. He leaned in the seat and closed his eyes. She thought he might be groggy from the narcotics they gave him for his shoulder pain. Was this going to be like that time he told her he loved her in an altered state? She remembered, but she couldn't conceive at the time he meant it. Did he actually loved her? Well they loved each other that was sure, but they weren't in love, were they? Better not to think about that. This might be a one-time impulse like it had happened before. She felt the disappointment dawning on her like a dark mask. She drove in silence neither of them wanting to say anything. She parked the closest space to his entrance. Turned the car off and waited. Waiting for him to leave and pretend nothing happened for the rest of their lives. Her chest constrained into a small space, she couldn't breathe. He spoke first.  
“I have been thinking about kissing you for a long time now..,” he said with his eyes still closed like he was talking to himself. Her heart was violently beating against her breastbone. He was talking about it, finally. There was not going back this time.  
“How long?” She asked. He opened his eyes to answer, but he didn't look in her direction. They stayed fixed on the ceiling of the car.  
“Longer than I was willing to admit to myself..." He took a deep breath "But this was not how I imagined it..,” he said still avoiding her eyes. Was he disappointed? Was this a conversation to end things before they even begun?  
“No?” He smiled and looked at her now.  
“I thought you will give me a black eye.” She chuckled relieved.  
“Ah...” She remembered that conversation.   
“Scully, I know that... sometimes I take you for granted,” She couldn't deny that. She was mostly shocked that he was acknowledging it at all. He wasn't the talk about my feelings type. Technically neither was she, but now it seemed that avoiding talking about this was more emotionally taxing than finally saying something. He continued.  
“I don't do it on purpose, you know? I just...I get these moments when my obsessions blind me. Where I can feel the truth right at my fingertips so close that I could touch it. And finally I could justify all the time I've wasted, all the losses we had been through, maybe find my sister and have some peace...” He looked at her with sadness on his eyes. She knew what he was talking about. She knew it too well.   
“That is when I lose sight of the most important person in the world for me... ” Her heart's palpitations almost broke her rib cage.   
“And you think I don't know that, Mulder?” That was a strange presumption he knew she understood. Just because she wasn't chasing every X-files thinking it was going to be the key to everything they had worked for all these years, it didn't mean she didn't understand how important this was.  
“I know you do. I just wanted to let you know that when I'm paying attention I think about you, about how can I make you happy. I usually think the best way is to keep my distance. So that is what I had done for a long time. Fighting every fiber of my being not to drag you deeper into this black hole that is my life." Scully was misty-eyed. How could he think distance was for the best? He should know at this point how much she needed him.   
"I tried my best not to let you know so I wouldn't commit any more mistakes with you...Except for tonight...” Scully felt a lump on her throat.  
“If you felt it was a mistake why...?”   
“I thought I could get away with giving you friendly peck. Then pretend that it was nothing and still be friends..." The sadness on his voice seemed to add more regret. He paused looking at her finally. Scully avoided his eyes, nervously she played with her knuckles.  
“That didn't felt friendly to me...”   
“I know...I lost track of the time.” He whispered. She looked at him again. His eyes landed on her lips, the intensity of his sight made her feel disoriented for a second. Mulder closed his eyes again. Scully was trying to gather some coherent thoughts.  
“Scully, I failed at the first part but I still can try to pretend nothing happened... If that is what takes for you to come to work every day and still be my friend,” he said, his eyes still fixed on ceiling. She couldn't expect less, he was giving her a chance to go back to the things as they were, not harm done. His hands were balling into fists and she could see his neck lines tense. This was definitely not what he wanted.  
“Mulder, I wasn't giving you a friendly kiss either..,” he said nothing.  
“You are not dragging me, I'm following you because I want to. Obviously I also want more than work and friendship from you too." Mulder smile's grew almost imperceptibly.  
"But I know what is like to want something, but choose not to pursue because you cannot live with the consequences,” A memory from her past was reminding her that it wasn't this simple.  
“If you want to move forward or if you decide that this is a mistake. I will still go back to work because I care about The X-Files and I will still be your friend because I care about you.” He nodded, his expression unsure. He opened his car door.  
“I will see you soon, Scully,” he said. He waved with his good hand and turned around. She wasn't sure what will happen the next time they see each other. In a few hours with a clear head he might decide to forget the whole thing. She really didn't want that, but then what did she want?


	11. INTIMACY

He had a short medical leave so Scully ended up working alone for a few days. He used to call daily when he was absent, but this time he didn't call for the entire week. Not at her house, not at work.   
“So I guess back to normal,” She bitterly muttered to herself. It was a painful thought but she was good at compartmentalizing. Se had to; with every horrific case or decomposed body she had to delve into made her and expert on keeping things in little disposable boxes on her head, it was necessary to keep her sanity. Neither of them were teenagers to let this confusing feelings get in the way of this long-lasting relationship they both had, let alone their work. They will find a way around this.   
He finally called the day before he was due to come back. Scully guessed he was putting it up until the last-minute. He started asking for an update on some cases. He seemed more quiet than usual. She wanted to try to break the awkwardness, but didn't have the words and just hope that by not bringing it up it might just be forgotten.   
“Do you have any plans for tonight, Scully?” Mulder casually asked. Her heart bounced on her chest.   
“No really, just read, clean....”  
“Wild night” He said. She snorted.   
“Do you mind if I stop by your house?” He said his voice soft and low. She felt the heat burning up her cheeks and smiled to herself.  
“No, I don't mind....”   
“Good..,” he said hanging up. She felt delighted maybe things were not going back this time. She finished her work and left the office at the usual time, went home and changed. She wore a casual green cashmere and soft pants. She tried to see what was there for food but she knew he was happy eating leftovers or frozen pizza. She wondered if she was jumping the gun so to speak. He might just made sure that things were going back to normal and wanted to discuss it in a more private setting. It wouldn't be the first time.   
She sat down on her couch thinking about Mulder sleeping on it the last time. In that night that seemed that changed everything. Was he hoping he will get to spend the night on her bed tonight? She considered this, she was not the type to kiss a man and go to bed with him a few days later, but then this was not a conventional situation. A good first date is still just a few hours with a stranger not enough to get to know someone and feel comfortable with intimacy, at least it was not for her. But then this was Mulder. If they counted the shared meals, the home visits, the caring during sickness and injuries. The trips across the entire country and sometimes internationally, the meeting of each others' family, even the odd holiday they spent together. They had been dating for years. Now it wouldn't too fast, if anything they were being too slow. She chuckled a bit.   
Shouldn't she prepare herself in case things went well? But then thinking about that brought ideas and memories she had fought long and hard to bury. Her mood suddenly changed. She heard a knock in her door. She took a deep breath trying to forget what was on her head.   
“Hi” Mulder said when she opened the door. He was wearing his usual casual long sleeve t-shirt a deep shade of green and jeans. He was holding a paper bag on his hand. His shoulder seemed fully healed now.   
"Hi" She said. Avoiding looking at him in the eye. He got inside and noticed immediately her mood.   
"What's wrong?"   
"Nothing" She lied.  
"If this is a bad moment..." He said confused. He thought she wanted this too. Did she changed her mind? He mentally tried to push back all the fantasies he allowed himself to indulge in during this days.  
"No....no..." Scully said gathering her thoughts. Mulder didn't even sit, thinking that maybe he should leave.  
"Look if you changed your mind..." He tried to sound as calm as possible. What if he was moving too fast?  
"No...Is just....Can you sit down?" She said, he obeyed, sitting at the edge of the couch. Scully sat down next to him.  
"I was pondering the real possibility that there might be... intimacy between us, tonight..." He was going to say something, but she continued talking.  
"...And I started thinking about being prepared. Both of us have been extensively tested and we haven't been with anyone in at least six months. Neither had we received a blood transfusion in the same amount of time...Which is surprising given how often we end in the hospital..,” she said trying to made light of the situation. Mulder kept silence.  
"Obviously there are no concerns for STD's....then it came to me... that was it. I didn't have to worry about anything else... forever..." Mulder understood immediately and opening his arms let her in to hold her. She leaned on his chest.  
"Maybe that is why I was so absurdly blind to this attraction growing between us. Maybe I was protecting myself. Trying not to think about this painful subject again..." Mulder held her tighter letting her share her pain with him. He already said how sorry he was before and he knew repeating this words wouldn't help. So he just held her. Scully cleaned up a tear from her left cheek and tried to stand up.  
"I'm sorry I'm ruining our evening..." She stood up "I'm sure after a few glasses of wine I might be able to..." Mulder pulled her back down with him.  
"Shh...no rush,” he said and held his head on her shoulder. Scully took a deep breath.  
"No?"  
"I wasn't thinking that we were going to move that fast...I mean sure I want to...but I'm happy just knowing that you know and that your first reaction was not to run away in the opposite direction,” he said. Scully leaned her head on his shoulder again.  
"Mulder...You and I are complex people, living a complex, dangerous life. And even though I'm sure nothing will ever break us apart. We have diametrically opposites ways to see life that often put us at odds. We both know sexual attraction is often a fleeting, flaky emotion." She sat down to look at his face again.  
"What if the next case we try to solve, the next mystery we stumble upon kills this feeling once and for all? Don't we owe to ourselves explore this for as long as it last?... Carpe Diem?" Scully said her mind was clear, she decided on follow this course with Mulder even if now her emotions were taking the best out of her. Mulder smiled.  
"Scully, my beautiful rational partner." She smiled at this words, this was the first time he ever call her beautiful.  
"That is indeed the logical course of action, but what I think... What I feel we owe to ourselves is do what makes us happy and I don't feel this is it. Do you?" She couldn't argue that.  
"See? We can agree once in a blue moon...And even if you change your mind I will still feel so fortunate that I got to hold you close to me like this," He pulled her closer surrounding her with his arms.  
"That I got more than just a friendly kiss from your lips..,” he said brushing his lips slightly on her. She kissed back carefully.   
"That I got inhale your scent" He placed his nose close to her nape and took a deep breath. His fingers combed her hair on the back of her head.  
"That I got to touch your beautiful silky...gray hair" Scully snickered. Mulder was colorblind her hair always looked grayish to him.  
"That is more than enough Carpe Diem to last me a lifetime," Scully couldn't stop smiling. She surrounded his neck with her arms.  
"What about you? I mean what if you get tired of waiting for me?"  
"Nah even if you change your mind today and in sixty years you want me back... I will be the happiest toothless one-hundred-year-old in the nursing home." The image of Mulder that old was slightly amusing to Scully.  
"Thank you" She said planting her lips on his, carefully no need to tease him. She hugged him and rested her head on his shoulder again.  
"I'm pretty sure I won't change my mind...Would you do me a favor?"  
"Anything."  
"That you will keep hitting on me"  
"I'm always hitting on you..."  
"Yeah but joking I mean seriously when there might be a chance of going somewhere."  
"Wouldn't that make you feel pressured?"  
"No...I just want to make sure neither of us is going back to pretend nothing is going on... again."  
"Okay will do, but I want a favor in return."  
"Yes?"  
"That you will talk to me when you feel down over not having children, always. I don't want you to go through this alone."  
"Okay"   
"And always remember that I will wait for as long as you need." Scully squeezed him stronger.  
"You know? For a man addicted to porn you are incredibly patient."   
"I'm not addicted to porn...I can quit any moment!" She rolled her eyes.  
"Sure, sure..." He leaned in to whisper on her ear.  
"Besides, there are other forms of intimacy..." Scully frowned wondering what he meant by that. He slid his hand inside the paper bag and got a VHS tape out of it.  
"Ta da!" Scully read the movie title.   
"Ed Wood? Ugh Mulder...can't we just have sex?" Scully said in a whiny voice. He chuckled.  
"Nope..." Scully couldn't help but laugh. She got up to heat up some leftover pizza and opened a couple of bottles of ice tea. The movie was not half bad and Mulder made it more fun paraphrasing the dialogue and making jokes. By the time the credits rolled she felt very relaxed and entertained.   
"I must admit this wasn't the worst movie you had imposed on me.”  
“I promise I will do worse next time..,” he said cackling.   
"So this counts as intimacy for you?" Scully said placing her empty bottle on the table.  
"Sure, we had a good time, only the two of us doing something fun without a single mention of the X-Files. I could sleep like a baby cat now" He said.   
"Want to try what I think is intimate?" She said trying to suppress the laugh at Mulder's panicky face.  
"I...okay?"  
"Let's...talk about our feelings..." Mulder half sighted, half grunted.  
"Feelings...? What are those? Can you eat them?"   
"I have always being curious about something...Why you don't like your first name Fox? I mean you told me that you made your parents call you Mulder but that is obviously not true...I don't mind call you whatever name you prefer, I never did, I was just wondering..." His face didn't look that relaxed anymore.  
"I mean if you don't want to talk about it..."  
"No is okay...I guess is time for you to know...As useful as is to have a photographic memory sometimes...many times is kind of a curse... Fox was Samantha's last word before she was taken." Scully let go a gasp.  
"For the longest time, every time I heard that name I got a flashback. I forgot about it until my hypnosis and then it came back with a vengeance...Is not so bad anymore I guess time does heal everything even images seared in your brain."   
"Did your parents knew?"  
"Oh yes I'm not the kind to keep these things secret. My father usually called me son so he was more or less okay with not calling me Fox...when he remembered. My mom on the other hand...She felt I was being vindictive or something... she just didn't pay attention to my weird request."  
"I'm sorry..."  
"Is okay I'm mostly growing out of it, maybe in two or three centuries you might call me Fox and I won't squirm internally." He smiled.  
"I will put it on my calendar" She started to clear up the coffee table and Mulder helped her with some of the dishes. She put some in the dishwasher and she started to wash some containers by hand. Mulder took a towel to help dry and put them away.  
"So is my turn now?" Scully frowned.  
"Sure...what do you want to know?"  
"Why Pathology?" She sighed.  
"You remember the story my mom told you about the snake we killed as kids?"  
"Yes"  
"I never got over that feeling. Watching life ending and not being able to save it. Is always something you need to be prepared in medicine, you know? Even the best doctors lose patients. I couldn't imagine living that. With Pathology the patient is already dead but you still can save them in a way. Tell their stories, give them a voice, help them achieve justice. It only made sense."  
"Yeah it does..."  
"But you know I don't feel like that anymore. I mean The X-files has been a challenging experience. I had seen many people die and as hard as it is. I think I can tolerate it for the good I could do. Maybe I could try working with kids next. I would like that..,” she said looking back to the dishes. She was surprised by not feeling the same bitter cold on her stomach she felt when she thought about children. Maybe she was moving on after all. Mulder was quiet next to her.  
"So... you see the X-Files had brought me some good things," She said, glancing at him sideways and smiling. He was part of the good things. He smiled back. They finished putting utensils out of the way.  
"I do have another question...Why do you always sleep in the couch?" He sighed again.  
"You sure you want to hear that one..? It involves Diana..." Scully frowned.  
"That's okay. I want to know..."   
"So you know I was with Diana when I found The X-Files, then I was still in my meteoric rise to the top stage Diana was very supportive, she thought that it was going to be great for my career..." Mulder sat down running his hands on his pants to dry them. Normally Scully would had given him a towel to do it properly but she was much too absorbed on the story.  
"Sadly I was more obsessed than it was healthy. Soon I was ignoring cases that will give me opportunities to advance my career to pursue unexplained ones. More often than not considered a dead-end. Diana tried to warn me and asked me to maybe focus less on The X-Files, take it as a hobby in my free time...As you can imagine that didn't worked out." He opened his eyes wide.   
"Obsessive and stubborn?...you Mulder?! I'm shocked!" Mulder scoffed. She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand.  
"I did listened to her at first. I was trying hard not to lose her to this new obsession...Did you took philosophy at college?"  
"No, German was my elective."  
"There is this text I always liked: Plato's allegory of the cave. It describes a cavern where all prisoners are chained, looking away from the entrance unable to see the sun. All they can see is shadows dancing in the walls. That is their perception of the world, from the moment they were born until they die. One day one of the prisoners is freed and he gets to go out. He sees the real world with the light of the sun and understand he has been lied to. There is a whole world outside that they have kept away from him. He then comes back and tries to free the others. But they don't listen, they see him stumbling because his eyes haven't adjusted to the darkness and think he is ill, crazy. That whatever is outside most be terrible and avoided.... It ends with the idea that the prisoners will try to kill any other man who tries to bring them the light of truth." He leaned in the table, his eyes lost in the distance.  
"I always imagined that the prisoner doesn't has anyone outside in this new world and feels lonely. He might try to go back with his friends in the cave, but he can't rejoin them. The shadows can't hold his interest anymore. He knows they are fake. He really wants to go back to the only world he has known but he can't, he has changed. He has been blinded by the sun. He has the truth but he is all alone in the knowledge of it..." Mulder's face was still, serene. His eyes misty-eyed. Scully just stare at him realizing with pain how lonely he must had felt all this years.   
"Diana and I started to fight a lot, like a lot and she will sent me to sleep in the couch in anger. We grew apart and at some point I didn't even bothered to go to our bed..." Scully suppressed a flinch to hearing him say our bed related to Diana but she tried not to take it too hard. She was dead now, possibly because she helped her to save Mulder. She could spare the jealous fit.   
"One night I came home and she had taken her clothes and all her possessions with her. She left me the divorce papers to sign asking me to join her on Germany if I didn't wanted that. She said that I still had a chance to save my career...I wasn't that surprised I knew I was losing her. And I felt I deserved it I had become a different man, but I just couldn't stop. I had to find Samantha and bring light to all that I learned... In any case I couldn't go back to that room as Dante said: There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery. The couch was like an oasis by comparison..." Scully brushed his hair.  
"I'm sorry..." he took her hand and kisses it.  
"Is okay that was eons ago, I don't feel like that anymore. I even have a new bed and all that....Now is my turn." He pulled her to sit on his lap.  
"Why do you stifle your laugh?" She frowned.  
"Ugh...I had a nickname during my first year of residency. Dr Giggles. My laugh is so silly and loud. I had some colleagues and one instructor that told me that whatever respect I was hoping to command was going to disappear the second anyone heard me laughing and I quote like a hyena. So I learned to keep it to myself, just like my singing." She shrugged.  
"That is the saddest thing I have ever heard. Someone missed the point of The Name of the Rose. Your laugh is music to me and I still respect you don't I?" She kissed his cheek.  
"Yes, you do..." He tickled her and she giggled openly without trying to cover her mouth. Mulder was feeling too comfortable with Scully sitting on his lap, squirming in pleasure. He decided it was time to call it a night.  
"Is getting late." She stood up, he put on his jacket to go home.   
"I will see you tomorrow" Mulder, said leaning down to give her a small kiss.  
"Mulder..."  
"Yes?"  
"I obviously didn't had a choice as to when and with whom I will ever explore this part of myself again...but if I had a choice. I would have chosen you,” she said blushing slightly. Mulder's face seemed to turn slightly reddish too. He nodded and left.   
Mulder's entire body was filled with an emotion long forgotten. He fell happy, like when he was a child, like when he had a family and Samantha and him played games and watched TV with no worries or anxiety. Before the paranoia set in and the world was just beautiful and safe and full of color and love, unconditional love for him. He drove home looking at the night not as a shadow of conspirators, but as a comforting warm blanket for the world. He got ready for bed hoping to hurry up the morning so he could see Scully again.  
"I'm a lucky son of a bitch..,” he said before closing his eyes.  
Scully got ready for bed slightly humming to herself, smiles and giggles were her companions while she thought about work and seeing Mulder again. She fell sleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.


	12. KARMA (During and After Sein und Zeit, CLOSURE, all things.)

Mulder and Scully were more than partners, they were each other sounding boards, each other rock. Scully's heart bleed with the same pain Mulder felt when her mother killed herself. She held him that night to let him cry on her shoulder. He didn't say much, his words drowned on tears. Why life was so cruel to him?   
She grew concerned when it looked like he was getting conned by a psychic, but it turned out that this was a broken man like him. A father looking for answers science didn't had. She was with him when he found Samantha's diary and she held his hand when he read the lines where she remembered him. In the end she was not with him when he found freedom, but she could feel in the way his hand held hers, that the burden he bore had been lifted. Time will heal the tears and the pain. And time had only made them closer. 

Mulder's pain was deep ancient so old that he couldn't tell what part of him was flesh and what was just pain anymore, only having Scully by his side made him feel that there was something left of him. Something human worthy of love that still existed. Her mother called him, wanting to talk but he didn't listen if only he could had said good-bye to her. Without Samantha he was all alone, not alone he had Scully at least for now. When he found the diary his heart's wound opened, but not with pain of twisting the knife but with the pain of starting to properly heal. Samantha remembered him. On her pain and desperation he had thought about him. Two siblings separated by time and unseen forces their love still bound them together beyond the horrors and the tears. When he saw her in a vision she was older but happy and at peace. Living on starlight where all the years of pain were washed away and there was only love, unconditional love for her. Just all he wanted. Finding Samantha was just the name he could give to his quest. He wanted to know Samantha was happy and safe that the last time he saw her in panic screaming for help, was not the last thing she ever felt. Now that he knew that was the case, that she was safe even if she found this light beyond this world, he was free.  
Days and weeks passed and the grief became smaller. He buried the last member of his family. There was still work to be done, but now there was not this anvil holding his feelings back for the woman he loved. She already told her that one time when he was in the hospital, she didn't seemed to believe it. I guess the time was not right with all the meds and his ramblings like a madman. He needed to tell her again, when there was no reason for her not to believe him. He will wait for the right time.   
They made a bit more jokes to each other, some sexual innuendo when they could get away with it. Once in a while Scully would catch Mulder gazing upon her and she would respond with a smile. Sometimes she was the one staring at him and he would blush like a schoolboy. In front of Skinner and every other agent and supervisor they were nothing but professional, two people who work together, get a along and might be friends but nothing more.   
As content as Agent Scully was she still harbored her own doubts. Some days she felt trapped in a loophole of running after the next big thing over and over and over. Mulder, didn't seem to care about the time invested, the eternal chase that was his life. But she felt she was just tagging along. Having faith on him and the work will one day they will have the proof they needed. But time waits for no one and sometimes she felt she was going nowhere. Still longing for all things missing in their lives or at least what she was missing.   
Mulder and Scully rarely fought, but they had their usual disagreements. He did seemed more hurt than usual when she let him know that going to England in the latest, probably pointless, chase was less attractive than taking a bath. So she left without her.   
That ended up being for the best, thought. Scully spent the time he was away doing some soul-searching brought by her encounter with some demons from her past. Or better said a particular demon Dr Daniel Waterston.   
Daniel was the opposite of Mulder in many ways. He wanted a normal life with her, or whatever version of it he thought it was normal. He was a married man when he met Scully and eventually she left him to join the FBI. When she saw him again more than ten years later he was very sick. Scully as a doctor and as a friend did her best to help him, but in this strange time separated from Mulder she also had an epiphany that led her to try some alternative approach to Daniel's illness that she deemed in part psychosomatic, even thought then she used less scientific words.   
The process also allowed her to discover that letting go of the things she felt she should want and accept what she had was the key to her happiness.  
Scully said goodbye to Daniel and to the woman she thought she should be and welcomed the person she had become. A version of herself she liked better, one that she was proud of. True she had suffered more than she ever could imagine, but she was also proven herself stronger beyond her wilder dreams. All thanks to Mulder relentless pursuit of the truth. And what is a life without truth? A mockery, a play.   
While sitting on the park soaking in this new revelation. She saw again this blond woman who seemed to be around every time she needed help. When she finally reached her it was Mulder. Maybe her subconscious kept bludgeoning in her head the path she had to embrace.   
They went to his apartment, drank some relaxing herbal tea and she told him all about what happened in his absence. As usual, he exaggerated everything she didn't feel like a big change in her life, more like an eye opener. But sometimes her automatic response to Mulder is to say the opposite he says just to see what he will say next.  
“What if there was only one choice? And all the other ones were wrong? ” He seemed to agree with her this time. She was feeling so sleepy that she didn't hear his answer. Normally she would have made some coffee to wake up before it was too late to leave for her own home. Today it felt right to just slip into unconsciousness next to him.


	13. BAD SEX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> INTERMISSION   
> A humorous take on what happened between Mulder and Scully after the episode “all things” fades to black.

SCULLY'S VERSION

I woke up and it took me a second to realize I was on Mulder's couch. Normally I find quite endearing Mulder's inability to tell when a woman is interested on discussing more than UFO's and the supernatural with him. But tonight I was hoping he could read my signs of interest without so much effort. The fact that after babbling so long and practically calling him the only right choice for me. My clueless, but handsome partner decided to leave me, alone, didn't seem to indicate he got the message that I was ready.   
I looked around and saw there was still light on his room. I was hoping that if he was still awake maybe he was waiting for me to wake up and we could...Resume our conversation.   
I walked through the door and he was reading one of his UFO magazines. Not the mood setting scenario I was waiting for.  
“Scully! You are awake! I imagined after that friendly talk we had you probably wanted be left alone.” I sighed trying to see if I could salvage the night. I took my jacket off and threw it on his bed.  
“You know I actually was very uncomfortable in the couch. You could had carry me to the bed you know?” I said in my best sultry voice.  
“I'm sorry, you are right how do you put up with such a lousy partner, Scully?” He lowered his head and put his hands on his face. He was getting into guilt mode. I had to correct this fast. If he reached the brooding stage, he will stay stuck in it for a week.  
“Mulder is okay...Why don't you give me a back massage...?” I said raising my left eyebrow seductively.  
“Sure thing pal!” He said, more chirpy than expected.  
I sat on the bed, moved my hair out of the way and let him work on my back. It felt really good and I started to vocalize my...enthusiasm. I thought he will be able to understand the meaning of me seating on his bed at that late hour. Mulder kept talking about crop circles and work and the lone gunmen. Since subtlety was not taking me anywhere I tried a more direct approach.  
“You could finish the massage with a kiss in my neck,” He kissed me on the neck and I turned around to guide my face towards his lips.  
“Scully, does your back feel better?”  
“Yes...” I whispered leaning in.   
“Good!” He said. Distancing himself immediately, to go back to read his magazine. I almost felt in the bed due to the momentum. I was slightly exasperated given how abruptly the situation ended.  
“Seriously, Mulder for a guy with a vast porn collection you seriously can't read a sexual advance, can you?” He gave me a puzzled look with the magazine in his hands.  
“What do you mean?”  
“Mulder, I'm ready," I said with the widest smile I could give him.  
"Oh sorry I didn't notice. You are ready to leave. Good night, partner!" I took a deep breath.  
"Actually I rather spend the night...in this bed" I caressed the mattress and bit my lower lip. He looked at me slightly confused.  
"Okay" He said and went to sit in the floor.  
"What are you doing?"  
"You want the bed I will just sit in the floor...like usual." He turned around still reading the magazine. I took it out of his hands. He gave me another puzzle look.  
"Mulder, do you think I stayed this late just to talk?"  
"Well of course we are good friends!" He said smiling. He did had a point there.  
“Think about it, Mulder. You are an investigator. What do you think I want from you after all that has happened? The massage, taking my jacket off, no shoes, laying in your bed?” That had to work.  
"Oh Scully I'm sorry...I'm so embarrassed is obvious." He finally got it. He drew his face inches away from mine.  
"You are an excellent agent Scully. Your rationality and scientific skills are the only reason The X-Files works at all. I couldn't do this without you..."   
"What, What, are you talking about?"  
"I haven't praised your work lately. You need me to validate your role in the department, right?" I couldn't believe this.  
“Mulder, I know I'm not the flirtiest woman in the world but I'm trying here. We had kissed a few times now. You liked that, didn't you?" He smiled.  
"Yes, very much." Good that sounded promising.  
"Don't you want to move to the next stage?" I said drawing myself closer to him.  
"Yes of course...I will be very happy when in 7 more years we reach second base!"   
"WHAT? Mulder do I really need to wait seven more years to get... a ride on your little spaceship?" He jumped up looking at the ceiling.  
“Spaceship! Where? Where!?"  
“Oh for God's sake!” I grabbed him by his collar and got my lips as close as I could to his.  
"Come on Mulder its been seven years. Don't you Vulcans need to do the Pon Farr around this time?" Sure that was lame, but at this point I'll take lame over nothing.   
"Scully I'm not a Vulcan, I'm a mandroid..,” he said laughing at his joke.  
"Oh Scully, I'm so funny aren't I?" I just rubbed my temples.  
“Maybe I need to go back to therapy...” Suddenly he beckoned me.  
“Scully come here.” Finally some initiative. I sat on his lap and he whispered on my ear.  
“I know what is going on. Someone is listening to us and you are trying to give me clues. Is it Cancer Man?” I exhaled. Okay my last try. If that didn't work I was joining a convent.   
“Mulder, no one is listening...Just kiss me, just... kiss me...” I said he complied. I kissed him back as deeply as I could. I will at least get a good kiss tonight if nothing else.  
“Was that a platonic French kiss?”  
“Oh my God!” I said I took my shirt off and unzipped my skirt. If he asked me if I needed him to check for mosquito bites I was going to scream. He stood up and closed the distance.  
“Scully! you are ready." He kissed me long and deep until I couldn't see straight.  
"Why didn't you said so?”   
"What...!" I was going to lash out but his lips were on me again and I couldn't stay mad.   
After that things took their natural course, finally. It was wonderful, just like I always knew it will be.

 

MULDER'S VERSION

That is not what happened, I was the seducer Scully was the one not getting the message.   
I had been attracted to Scully for a long time now but I was willing to wait as long as needed. Finally that night when she was talking about paths I sensed that this might be the time to move our relationship to the next level. I let her sleep in the couch because I didn't wanted to be too forward and scare her. I was sitting in my bed reading, but thinking what to tell her when she wake up so she wanted to stay. She came into my room at midnight and I thought I might start earlier than expected. She looked at the magazine.  
“Is that porn? Because porn is for losers.” She then took her jacket off and sat in my bed.  
“Why aren't you sleeping?” She added. I smiled, and took her hand between both of mine, placed it on my chest.  
“Is hard to fall sleep with the most beautiful woman in the world just a room away.” I said looking straight into her eyes.  
“Do you have a new neighbor?” She said frowning at the wall. I almost lost heart. She started to rub her back.  
“That couch is so uncomfortable.” I saw an opportunity there.   
“Here, let me give you a massage” I started massaging her slowly working out her knots, she seemed to relax. I felt that this was going exactly where I wanted.   
“You know I'm glad you had this epiphany maybe now you might feel ready to be with a man who admires you and respects you. A man who also want to express his appreciation in physical ways.”   
“Frohike?”   
“Someone taller.”  
“I thought Langly was gay?” No idea where that came from.  
“Someone that works for the FBI.”  
“I think Skinner and his secretary are secretly married.” I let my head hang of and took a deep breath.  
“Scully, why do you think you are in my room in the middle of the night?” Maybe she can figure it out herself. I leaned on her my lips close to hers.  
“I ran out of things to criticize about your life in the office. I'm checking out what I can find here." She stood up before I could kiss her. She looked at my framed sports T-Shirt disapprovingly.  
“Maybe I should stick to porn...” She then started to talk about work. I think she mentioned Star Trek and something about a spaceship.   
“Scully come here sit in my lap a moment would you?” She sat down. I told her that we didn't need to talk about work. I felt very good about her closeness, way too good actually.  
“Mulder, you are so paranoid that you keep a flashlight in your pajama?”   
“Is not a flashlight”   
"Your gun...?"  
“No, Scully I want you...”  
“You want me... to do what...? An autopsy? At this late hour? Why!!!!”  
“No wonder this took seven years..." I took a deep breath.  
"I want to have sex with you.”  
“Sex? I don't understand?”  
“Intercourse, coitus, copulation, make love, fornicate...” She giggled at that part.  
“Ohh fornication...Like knowing me in the biblical sense?” She said drawing her face to mine.  
“Yes!...like... Adam and Eve...” She rub her hands on my chest. I should had guessed Scully had a Bible fetish.  
“Oh I like that.... Tell me more... In theological correct terms." All that time spent in motels was about to pay off. I knew The Bible from Genesis to Apocalypse.  
"Your lips distil nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue; the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon...." She stuck her tongue down my throat as far as it will go. It was glorious!   
"Now say something...in Latin..." My Latin was rusty but at least I recalled a few words that might be useful.  
“Peccatum mecum?”   
"Oh my God..." She took her clothes off and threw me on the bed. After that things worked perfectly. Totally worth the wait.

Scully PS:   
“I do not have a Bible fetish...”


	14. RESOLUTION (After X-Files episode all things)

A thin layer of sweat was covering Agent Mulder and Agent Scully. His head rested on her chest. She was inhaling the scent of his hair and combing it with her fingers. He had been quiet for a while brushing her breasts with feather-like kisses once in a while. Like he wanted to make sure she was still there. Scully's eyes blinked silent tears. Mulder noticed.  
"Scully, are you okay?" He asked clearly mortified.  
"Yes. Post coitus release of hormones and brain chemicals sometimes..." Mulder's face was still white out of fear.  
"Joy, these are tears of joy, Mulder,” she said laying her right hand on his cheek. He took a deep breath.  
"How about you Mulder? How do you feel?" He kissed her lips.  
"I feel...That if you were to eat my head right now I will say...worth it!" He said his lips pressing on her again.  
"Good because now that you mention it.." Scully said opening her mouth wide and aiming at his neck. She nibbled on his ear. They both laughed. He rested his head on her chest again. She was relaxed, spent, satisfied. Mulder was indulging himself in the feeling of peace and rest he hasn't experienced in a solid decade maybe more.   
"Why did it took us so long to do this again? I can't remember." Scully asked, her hands still entertained in Mulder's locks.  
"I think we were afraid that it will ruin our friendship." Scully frowned.  
"So constant death scares, horrible cases with the worst monsters humanity can offer both human and nonhuman. So many visits to the hospital that we should get one stay for free. No to mention that gross fluke man thing couldn't break us apart. But sex? Pleasure? Was the deal-breaker?"  
"It sounds like crap when you say it like that..."   
"It is crap...I'll blame your porn addiction"  
"I'll blame your Catholic upbringing" Scully scuffles.  
"Because I'm obviously so shy and repressed..."  
"You got me there...I will think of a witty return..." He yawned "Just give me a few days"  
"Oh Mulder, you are jet lagged you should get some sleep now."  
"I don't want to fall sleep on you."  
"I already did it earlier, we will be even. Just don't make a habit out of it."  
"Are you going to stay tonight?"  
"I wish, but I didn't bring the overnight bag. If I run into your landlord wearing this same clothes he will know I spent the night. We need to be careful about our...non platonic activities."  
"You had spent the night before, I don't think he will suspect."  
"After all the noise we were making, he will know last night visit was way too friendly."   
"Nah, he will just think someone was murdered here again... " Scully laughed and shook her head.  
"I promise I will bring extra clothes next time,” she said kissing the tip of his head.  
"Now turn around I will be the big spoon. I'll stay with you until you fall sleep." He turned around too tired to make the obvious argument that she was too short to be the big spoon.  
Agent Scully waited for a few minutes, soaking in the immensity of the moment. Mulder's naked body pressing against her own unclothed self. How come they never did this before, again? It felt so right, so perfect and natural. When Mulder's breathing was even she got up, gathered her clothes and dressed in the bathroom. She fixed herself as much as she could and left to pick up her jacket from his bed.  
Looking at Mulder naked, sleeping on his bed she got her answer. She was afraid because deep down she knew that after him there will never be anyone else. But this didn't bother her anymore: Mulder was the one and if she had a choice before she developed these feelings for him she would had picked him anyway. Deep down she always knew it. One day when they were both ready she will say it to him. She left with the song of love singing in on heart.


	15. SACRED CONVERGENCE

“Oh my God, Mulder, aren't you tired? You are almost 40 years old how come your testosterone levels are still this high?” Scully said, the thin sheet barely covered her while she rested face down in the bed. Mulder was laying on top of her. He kissed her ear.  
"Well my secret is that I don't drink, I don't smoke, I exercise and..,” he said pressing his lips in the base of her neck.  
"I have the sexiest woman in the city on my bed..,” he said now kissing her jaw line. Scully giggled.  
"Only the city?" She turned around batting her eyelashes.  
"The world?" He said, his mouth breathing against her neck.  
"Too big." She answered. He was kissing her shoulder.  
"The state?" His lips were now on her breastbone.  
"Too small again." She moved his head towards her Adam's apple before he got any lower.  
"The country?" He kissed her chin.  
"Hmm...?"  
"The east coast?"  
"I'll take that one..,” she said Mulder's lips landed on hers. Kissing her slowly for a moment. When she parted her lips he deepened his exploration. He seemed to want more than a kiss...again. She chuckled, breaking contact.  
"...I'm not a rabbit, I need some rest..." She sang. Mulder chuckled at the reference.  
"Okay, okay I'll be good." He rolled on his back to stare at the ceiling.  
She stood up, took his Knicks shirt and pull it over her head. She opened her overnight bag to find some clean underwear and put them on. She started to gather her own clothes. They were scattered all over the room. A skirt hanging on the lamp next to the bed. A shirt on the TV. Her bra was hanging on the fan and it got stuck in the wires, she was working to free it.  
"Where are you going? I promised I will be a good boy." She got her bra out of the wires.  
"I need to get some breakfast. I'm starving."  
"There is food in the fridge." She looked at him apologetically.  
"I'm sorry but today I need more than spoiled milk and stale cereal."   
"Your lack of faith in my food supply is disturbing..." He put on the bottom of his pajamas. Carefully took the clothes from her arms and placed them on the bed and led her by the hand to the kitchen.   
"Ta da!" He said opening the fridge door. Scully peered inside and gasped.  
"Eggs, pears, broccoli, berries, juice, lettuce, onions, apples, milk!...I"m impressed" He smiled triumphantly.  
"Look at the date on the milk" She read it. Good for at least two weeks.  
"Fresh milk!" She said immediately opening the gallon and drinking directly from it.   
"Who are you and what you did with Mulder?" He fake laughed and handed her a glass.  
"Since when are you buying groceries?" She asked pouring herself some milk.  
"Ever since a medical doctor has spent some nights. She has this crazy obsession with following the food pyramid and healthy eating...blah blah blah"   
"She doesn't sound very fun." Scully said giggling.  
"Here, you sit down I will make you an omelet. With onions, peppers, mushrooms and cheese."  
"Mmm" She said sitting in the kitchen table. He started to chop the vegetables. She rested her head on her hand observing with curiosity. She doesn't recall seeing him cooking, but is not like is rocket science.   
"If I knew all I needed to do to get you to eat healthy was having sex with you, I would had done it years ago,” she said smiling at him. He face-palmed.  
"I missed seven years of real food!" He said beating the eggs in a bowl and pouring them into the hot pan. Scully frowned slightly.  
"Seven years! Ha! Don't flatter yourself." He looked at her confused.  
"What?"  
"Do you honestly think that I would had ended up in bed with you the first year we met?” Mulder pouted.  
"You thought I was cute."  
"I also thought you were on the verge of a nervous breakdown" He put some bread in the toaster.  
"Ha! Joke is on you I had a nervous breakdown before we met...This is what happens after,” he said pointing at his head. She chuckled.   
"That actually explains a lot." He placed a plate with the omelet and two toasts for Scully while he was making one for him. She started to eat it.   
"This tastes really good." Mulder nodded and sat down with his own full plate.  
"Okay I admit that the first year was not likely because I'm not that kind of girl..." Scully rolled her eyes.   
"...But if not the first year then when?" He asked, taking a mouthful.  
"Well after that I was dealing with my abduction, my sister's death, then my cancer, then Emily..." She trailed off. Mulder tried to distract her.  
“Maybe when we were about to kiss and that bee sting you?”  
“That damn bee!" Scully said shaking her fist in the air.  
"I was just going for a kiss, but who knows,” he said winking.  
“Probably...but it would had been a mistake. I would had left your place and took a plane out of the state as fast as I could. I wouldn't even bother to pack,” she said taking another piece of omelet. Mulder frowned.  
"That seems drastic." She shrugged.  
"...And useless I would had taken the next plane to find you and beg you to come back. I would had told you we could still be friends and pretend nothing happened." Scully frowned.  
"Ugh! Yeah you do that...but I still wouldn't have come back. At least not right away...There were so many things I couldn't handle back then."  
“How so?” Scully eat another piece of her omelet.  
“Did you ever watched Jesus Christ Superstar?” He shook his head.  
“There is this part, where Mary Magdalene sings a song about struggling with... sinful feelings she felt for Jesus.”  
“That doesn't sound very Catholic!” She twisted her mouth.  
“... and how if he ever were to want to same she wouldn't like it...”  
“How does the song goes?" Mulder liked to hear Scully singing even if she couldn't carry a tune it was something she had only done with him.   
“...I couldn't cope  
Just couldn't cope  
I'd turn my head  
I'd back away  
I wouldn't want to know  
He scares me so...” He frowned at the last part.  
“I scare you, Scully?”   
“I...was mostly scared of myself. I wasn't ready to find out why..,” she said. Mulder reached for her hand across the table.  
“Well in my hallucination you were playing the part of Judas so maybe not..,” he said kissing her palm, she chuckled.  
“I promised you that I'm not waiting for 30 pieces of silver to betray you.”   
“Glad to know.”   
“No one will ever give me that much money for you.” She burst into laughter.  
“Ha, ha note to myself. Sex turns Scully into a comedian..,” he said leaning in to kiss her lips.  
“How about that baseball date?”   
“Maybe? That was pretty romantic."  
"And I missed my chance again...The history of my life!" He said taking the plates and putting them into the dishwasher. Scully took her glass and the silverware she was having breakfast with and placed it on the appliance too. She leaned in the kitchen counter next to Mulder.  
"Well if it makes you feel better at the rate we are going we are going to be making up for lost time very quickly." Mulder finished loading up the dishwasher, dried his hands and put both of his hands around Scully keeping her back to the counter. His chest pressed against her.  
"Oh" She said giggling.   
"Exactly how quickly, Dr Scully my favorite math geek?" She bit her lips.  
"Well according to my calculations if we keep this rhythm is probably going to be in 3 to 4 months." He kissed her neck and whispered on her ear.  
"Want to try to make it in two?..,” he said his lips rubbing against her neck.  
"I don't think I will survive..,” she said taking his chin on her hands and give him a quick peck. Mulder exhaled and took a step back.  
"Okay I will be good I promise...We can watch a movie or take a walk...or go out and eat...or..." He trailed off. The dishwasher made a strange metallic noise.  
"Sorry...I think I need to get a new one." Mulder said kicking the machine under the sink. He started to scrub the pan.  
"Or...?" Scully was curious.  
"I don't want to bring a painful subject, but the last couple of weeks you haven't talked to me ...about the baby."  
"Oh that... Yes I haven't..,” she said looking away. Her eyes lost in the distance.  
"I just want to make sure you are okay." Scully kept her eyes away from Mulder's face.  
"...I was going to talk about it. I had pondered. I think I'm kind of accepting it. I mean once in a while I think how wonderful will be, especially now. This is how I would had preferred it to happen, but then I also think that God has his reasons."  
"Aren't you mad at him for no answering our prayer?"  
"I know this will sound like conformist BS to you, but we all believers pray knowing that our prayers are things we ask from the point of view of our limited human experience. God has the eyes of eternity. So even if he doesn't gives you what we want he might give us what we need..." Mulder finished scrubbing put the pan away and dried his hands.   
"How so?"   
"Maybe the miracle is us." He smiled and tilted his head.  
"I mean it was that night when we prayed together that everything changed. Maybe this is what he felt we needed instead of a child." His expression grew somber.  
"Is that enough for you?"  
"I don't know...?" She kept quiet for a few minutes.  
"There was this nun when I was going to Catholic School, Sister Rice. She was just amazing with kids especially toddlers. One of the girls asked her if she missed not having children of her own and she said that she did, every day, but her work with the kids and her mission to serve God was for her like the children she will never have. I wasn't interested on children back then, although I assumed they will just happen along the way. I still found the idea powerful enough to remember it..." She smiled again.   
"Maybe The X-Files is our baby."  
"Ugh! That is a very ass ugly baby."   
“I mean this has been your work for almost a decade and it has become mine too. Maybe this is what God gave us to care and grow and nurture together: The truth." Mulder should had taken this as a good sign but a part of him was sad she was giving up already.  
"That is not what I prayed for..." He whispered. The words came out without him wanting to.  
“What did you asked for?”   
“A pony..,” he said, they both snorted.   
“Not really, what did exactly asked for,?” His eyes grew intense, he licked his lips, biting them a bit. Scully liked that way too much.  
“I prayed before, you know? ...To find Samantha... ” He shook his head. He did found her, but back then he wanted to find her alive and well.  
“I choose not to believe because if God didn't listen to me he was whether cruel, powerless or worst, indifferent towards me in particular and humans in general...” Scully heard that sentiment before and at least in Mulder's case she couldn't blame him too much. Life had been very cruel to him.  
“But I told him that night that if he gives you this baby you want so much. If sooner than later I get to see you holding that child in your arms. See you raising him, or her healthy, happy and safe. I will believe he is real and that he cares...” The thick drops from her eyes fell almost immediately.   
“You will believe?...Because of me...?” He held her face with both hands.  
“Scully...If there is a God I would understand why he wouldn't help me...but you? If he is omniscient and all-loving. He knows how beautiful you are inside and out. How much pure and good you are. If I had his power I wouldn't deny you anything you wanted. Even if I had to rearrange the entire universe just for you.” A tear fell down her left cheek. She could barely speak. She pulled him towards her so she could surround him with her arms. Leaning her head against his shoulder. She was so thankful, so indescribably thankful.  
Mulder just soaked on her warm. Happy that he managed to tell her a bit more of how much she meant to her. He was working his way to tell her that he loved her, soon he will say it, soon. She calmed herself enough to say something.  
“...Thank you..,” she said in a short whisper. She inhaled the sweet scent of his skin. Her head dizzy with emotions she couldn't name. This experience with Mulder was so unlike anything she ever lived before. A deepness that she never allowed herself to feel before with anyone else. But Mulder has gotten under her skin and she couldn't resist his closeness intellectual, emotional or physical. The more he wanted her, the more she needed him.   
“Is the truth...” He whispered, resting his arms around her back. She rested her forehead on his. A comforting familiar gesture of affection among them. They stayed like this for a long time. She was caressing his skin, feeling his arms around her. Mulder just kept the same position trying to behave like he promise, but he couldn't help, but feel aroused every time he felt her body this close. After a few minutes of silence Scully finally had some words to say. She let go of her embrace and held his face with her hands. He rested his palms on her waist. She looked him deep on his eyes.   
“I pray every night for you to find the truth. If I had the power I would give you all the secrets of the universe just to you...” His eyes were watering then too. He never thought she was asking for mercy for him to her God. His chest felt warm. Like his heart was held by a soft hand. Scully's hand holding it and taking care of it as much as she will take care of her own heart.  
“Scully, I...” Her lips covered his. He responded with the same force. They had been intimate for weeks but right now their bodies were past want and abandoned into a need. So much need. Like those seven years of distance and repression were finally giving in completely.  
"I thought you needed some rest..." Mulder whispered on her earlobe. Using the last bit of strength he had to make sure this is what she wanted now. Scully wrapped her legs around his torso.  
"Seven years is more than enough rest..." Her mouth hungrily covered his.  
"You are a goddess,” he said letting go his reservations. He picked her up and carried her to the bed. The last act of precaution before surrendering to their senses. To the primitive, desperate carnal impulse that had taken over. Immersing them on the pleasure of something beyond sex and beyond love. The power of creation, acting through their open bodies, clear minds and willing souls.   
The answer to a prayer that set one heart beating and filled a barren womb with infinite light.


	16. PART II - MUSINGS OF A SORRY SON OF A BITCH (After X-Files episodes: The Goldberg Variation,Orison,The Amazing Maleeni, Signs and Wonders, X-Cops, First Person Shooter, Theef, En Ami, Chimera, Brand X, Je Souhaite, The Gift (flashbacks))

I should had known the moment I found happiness I was going to die. Appropriately, thanks to the last gift of that Cigarette Smoking Bastard.   
"Unknown Brain Disease." Most vague diagnosis in human history.   
Part of me feels thankful for ignoring my symptoms for so long. The oversleeping, the constant headaches, the mental lapses. It was all a subtle humming in the background that I could ignore until it was too obvious. I was so busy thinking about The X-Files, about conceiving that child with Scully, about kissing her and eventually loving her with all of my mind, body and soul. I couldn't be bothered to see how I was going through painkillers like they were my sunflower seeds. How I kept forgetting details about cases for the first time in my life. Thankfully this symptoms were scattered enough that no one, not even Scully notice.  
"Are you sure? A psychic told me that I would die of autoerotic asphyxiation..." I recall telling my first doctor, trying to make a joke. He was not finding it funny. He gave me details about my condition and the ravage it was doing to my brain. Told me about some experimental treatments. I declined, decided to ask for a second opinion, then a third. I picked doctors on Raleigh so I could justify my trips to North Carolina with visiting my family's grave. That should be good enough if anyone inquires, especially if Scully realizes what is going on.  
The other part of me that was less selfish. I feel guilty and wished I would had gone at the first sign of issues. I wouldn't have dragged Scully into this if I knew. I would had told her that I was not better than a sperm donor because if we had this child she will still raise it alone anyway. I would had died without trying to kiss her just to spare her burying a lover instead of a friend. Now is too late for that. I should had known that I will always hurt her even if I didn't plan to.   
Now there is nothing to be done, but wait. Three doctors had told me the same. They all are surprised I kept going for so long. According to the last one is likely all will come crash down all at once. My brain functions will shut down I will slip into a coma and dead will soon follow.  
I lost my last chance of a cure when I went to visit that soul eater and decided to take away his pain instead of selfishly adding more to his ancient burden. I'm sure Scully will understand. I just couldn't live on the suffering of this creature for the rest of the life he could give me.   
Now it was time to put my business in order. Before my mental capacities diminish to the point that I can't do anything, at least not legally. I copied all I need to write my will from a law book in the library. I inherited quite the amount from my parents and as the last one of my entire family I can use it as a please.  
"The last one..." It seemed fitting. After what my parents did to us. After what they hid from the world. No one left behind that shares their blood will exist. Not even mine or a child of mine. When they were alive I refused to use the money they had. Before I knew because it was their way to compensate not being able to be with me. I recall all the times they were traveling for Christmas or my birthday and I had to spent it alone or with friends, when I still had some or at the dorms. Yes, they sent me the biggest more expensive presents, sometimes a check for a huge sum, but all I wanted was to sit with them share a meal and a laugh. They couldn't be in the same room for a long time after the divorce so avoiding me was their way to avoid each other. They couldn't even talk long enough to coordinate so at least each of them could spent some time with me without the other. Maybe it was my fault. I remembered the first Christmas after Samantha was taken.  
We were at the Galbrands. They used to host most of the parties of the block. A big house full of children. Stables, a pool, lights everywhere. Dance and music and enough food to feed an entire small country. Mom and dad were talking to the adults and the other kids were running around. All I could think of was that Samantha was not here with us enjoying this holiday and she never will. I went outside to sit in the dark so no one will see my tears. Mrs. Galbrand found me.  
"Fox...What are you doing here?" She asked. She sat down next to me. Impulsively I hug her.  
"I wish Samantha was here..." I said hoping for sympathy. She ruffled my hair.  
"I know, sweetie." She pulled me back almost immediately.  
"Look Fox you have to be strong for your family. Especially your mom. She is not well and reminding her of your sister just makes things worse." I was paralyzed she also wanted to forget her.  
"Now be a good boy and dry those tears. Don't distress your mother. Teena needs to move on and so do you." She pinched my chin, stood up and cleaned out her dress and with the fakest smile I had ever seen offered me her hand.  
"I will be there in a minute." I said. She nodded. As I saw her get back to the party I couldn't see my neighbors the same way. The laughs, the polite conversations, the touches, the looks; It was all fake, all darkness Ms Galbrand was becoming part of the darkness too as she slide in. She got closer to my mother and whispered something on her ear. She looked at me dead cold, her face full of fury. She squeezed her shoulder and my mother turned away from me ignoring me for the rest of the night. Every adult there looked the same, white lies to forget the ugliness of the world and their own children with them if needed. All of them were in it. All of them wanted to forget my sister. It was the first time I felt I couldn't trust anyone.   
Even with my fears I did my best to be a good son. I tried to forget her too, to live my life, like she never existed. I succeeded all too well. But there was still that nameless emptiness in me. That feeling that someone was missing that I was incomplete. Even with the recognition, the congratulations and a beautiful brilliant woman by my side. I was not happy I still longed for more. I didn't knew what until that time I got exposed to the Analytic Histamine gas and my eyes were open to the possibilities.   
Some days I wish I never stumble upon that, my life would had been so easy. But then would it? I was dying inside, all those years suppressing the memories, the hurt and the lies. This work finally gave me a purpose and something to aspire to and helped me and so many people who no one listened before we opened The X-Files. I'm convinced that the emptiness, the hole in my heart with the shape of my sister would had eaten me away. Until one day I would had shot myself with my gun. No one knowing why a young bright guy like me that seemed to have it all could possibly be so miserable. At least now I have my work. Although eventually I ended up finding someone who understood too.   
"Scully..." I whisper her name and I feel safe for the moment. Who would had told me ages ago that she will become such an important part of me. My partner, my ally, my sister, my college, my friend, my touchstone, my lover...If I had the time I would wanted her to be my wife and mother of my children too.  
"Matahari" I snorted recalling the first time I called her that when I read her profile and saw how beautiful she was. They had just told me she was going to be assigned to the X-files. Coincidentally, it happened right after I tried to get access to the records I needed to continue my work and was still coming empty-handed. How convenient. They send a little cute spy. She was going to use her feminine charms to distract me while she gathered the proof to shut me down. Well, not without a fight.  
How wrong I was? She was brilliant, competent, committed and had integrity beyond anyone I had ever met. I wonder if I fell in love with her since I saw her first. Maybe? I knew she was attractive and I knew she made me use every cell of my brain to proof my theories so maybe I didn't sound like a mad man every time I discussed the issue with outsiders.   
Maybe it was when I saw her pointing a gun to that man and rescue me from the military base. I couldn't remember much but I remember her, fearless, self-possessed and with a face that if I would had been the one she pointed the gun at. I would had obeyed any order she gave me.  
The same face she used so many times to tell me that I was jumping to conclusions. That I needed better proof and who made me work for all the findings I had filed. It was frustrating and annoying and exciting and I never gained so much territory and learned so much about the intricacies of the conspiracy until I had her to challenge me.  
Maybe it was when she was abducted? It was like I didn't have a heart to feel anymore. Like she took it with her. All the abduction stories I read through the years tormented sleeping or awake. All starring Scully. I couldn't even start to think how bad I was until she was returned to me. Then I decided to pretend that the experience didn't change me and I mostly succeeded.   
I did felt jealousy every time I noticed how other men looked at her. But I always felt it was just a primitive selfish macho impulse and suppressed and ignore it. Because she was someone I needed to share my work with not my bed. And yet the impulse was always there lurking behind the surface. I called it something else when I couldn't ignore it.  
Labeling feelings in whatever way made things easier was something I did a lot with Scully. Once she was abducted I thought I felt guilt and that I cared more than before because she was a friend. Later I thought she was just like my sister. I even once I thought of her as my mother especially when she nagged me about my choices. I felt she was like me that she wanted to work hard and be only about her career until she talked to me about motherhood. It was confusing to think of her as that. My mother was never like Scully truthful and brave so I guess I assumed that mothers were all like that. Hiding behind curtains, cocktails dresses and housework a lifetime of secrets. I think meeting her mother helped me realize that not all mothers were like mine.  
It was a strange, unsettling idea that she one day will find a man who will give her what she wanted. That one day she will have that child and she will leave for a safer work. It was so hard for me to think about that possibility that I pretended it will never happen, ignored it until that fight we got before she almost got killed in her second appearance in the X-files. A horrible thing to say. It was there I realized that she has other needs she was not going to forget like I did.  
I think it was when she had cancer and I thought she was going to die. I knew I couldn't imagine life without her. Even when she was abducted I still felt I could go on sad and broken but there was still things to do and that maybe one day I will find her. But with her cancer all the future could offer was bleak and dark. She was strong and brave and we managed to find a way to save her. I started to tell myself that it was just about her life that it was a normal reaction to losing the closest thing to family I had for a while. When she was going to be assigned to Utah when she was going to leave the Bureau to live the life she wanted and deserved I remember the fear. The uttermost desperation.   
I had partners leave me before and I had been reassigned why it was different now? I could find another scientist to help me in my quest but, a scientist that was not her, not her ideas, her intellect, without her face, without her lips, without her eyes. For a split of a second my noble side told me that this was for the best that she suffered enough that she should be better off without me. But the selfish in me could only think Scully don't go, Scully don't leave me and in that battle the selfish side won.   
I poured my heart out to her telling him the only truth I knew. That she saved me, that without her I couldn't go on. As her face told me she believed it, that she finally realized how important she was I knew I shouldn't do this to her, that this was just a job. When she embraced me and I felt her soft body pressing against mine. I couldn't deny it anymore. I did saw her as the beautiful woman she was. I looked into her eyes trying to tell her how everything about her was precious to me and how I wish I could be the man she wanted too, but my mouth wouldn't move. Better yet it didn't wanted to do anything but taste her lips. I went slowly thinking she might want to stop me, or she might want to think. But she didn't move she was there waiting for me.   
For better or worse we were interrupted. She was then taken and I had to race to save her life. Five minutes after begging her to stay she was in danger again. I needed to let her go. I promised myself to forget what I felt and I tried to tell her that if she survived. In spite of everything she decided to stay. Of course she did, she was a doctor she wanted to save lives. Now she knew there was a health threat out there with the potential to kill millions and no one to stop them, but us, together. We knew there as a cure for it. Of course she had to stay.   
“My noble, Scully” Was it after that writer tried to kill her? I never hated a man more in my life. I hated that he will allow himself to have fantasies about her that I wouldn't dare. I hated that he was not afraid to tell her how he felt, that he didn't have the baggage I thought at the time would never let her see me the same way.   
But he obviously didn't knew her. He fill up the blanks with his own needs. He didn't knew of her compassion or generosity or patience. The music on her laugh or the way she looked embarrassed when she sang. How she will drool on her sleep. He was just an old school creep maybe with some projection powers.   
I shouldn't be so hard on him. He warned me about her possible death and I suspect he killed himself to save her.   
“Scully” More of a wife to me than a friend or a colleague. I wish I could had asked her before I knew I was going to die. In many ways is better that way. One thing about not telling her until the end is that I won't be there to see her fury when I made her my sole heir and in charge of my estate. She was too independent to accept anything, but the occasional gift from me. Now she will have no choice. I hope she uses it to leave, maybe travel, have some fun. I could see her opening a private practice for children. I could almost see her surrounded by her little patients, light protecting her at all times instead of the darkness of the X-Files, instead of the darkness of my life.   
How much I wished this was our future together. If I had more time I would had gone away with her. Of course is only in the clarity of my last days that I can see that. All I have left is her and all I want to do is to be with her. But I won't be telling her the truth. I want to fill her mind with good memories of our time together not with the worries of sickness and deathbed vigils. We have enough of those.  
As part of my last arrangements I had a family tombstone made. Kind of morbid just want it to make it easier for her. I also wrote a check for the entire year of rent for my landlord. I want to give Scully time to mourn. Like with her Christmas tree she hated putting things away before she was ready to let go. She asked her mom not to clean out her father's closet for a year after his passing. And with Melissa she cried when the landlord removed everything from her place the same week she passed away. I wanted to spare her that.  
I could imagine her coming here. Sitting in my couch, looking after the fishes. I could see her in our bed alone sleeping, soaking on my scent, remembering me. Remembering all the memories we shared together in this Apt 42. I could only hope it was more good times than bad ones.   
My will also specified that I didn't wanted an autopsy. There is no need. I kept my medical records and I will probably die in a hospital. I already put Scully through a hard time when my grief made me blind enough to ask her to do one for my mom. I knew that if someone needed to confirm there was not foul play she wouldn't let a stranger touching me. So is better not to have it done.  
Organ donation was out of the question. I had no idea how this disease came to be and how it might affect other organs. For all I know the black oil was still dormant somewhere inside me. I couldn't damn anyone else unknowingly. I hope the worms cannot turn into aliens hybrids.  
The Lone Gunmen will receive a package containing all my remaining porn. That will make Frohike happy. Inside a little box with several keys and a code for them to break where they could find lockers with cash and some hiding from the government essentials hidden across the country. That way they will have some backups for when they need to go in the run. That is always a possibility in our line of work. It might be a nice road trip for them in my memory.  
Is satisfactory to use this money this way, blood money, my sister's blood to be exact. Money she deserved more than me. I was hoping that once I found Samantha, it will help her settle or help her to recover from her abduction. I never told anyone that in my worst case scenario I was expecting that she might be in really bad shape in need of medical help and several therapies. The oldest the abduction and the longer the person has been missing the worst the condition they were found. I wanted to have all the money I could so it won't be an obstacle for her treatments. Now that I knew she is dead long before I even started to look for her she won't need it. It will at least do some good. The last good action any Mulder will ever do.


	17. PARADISE LOST (During and After X- Files episode; Requiem.)

I hold Scully to warm her up. We are in Oregon. I feel like I felt when I was about to find out what happened to Samantha. A sense that things are going to change. Full circle before the end. This might be the last time we work together, the last time we share a motel room in FBI budget. I recall how I saw her today and will think of that image before I close my eyes forever. She was luminous while holding that baby. I tell her that the costs are too high implying that is time for both of us to move on from The X-Files. This trip might be the last excuse they needed to shut us down. I was okay with that. My work will die with me now, but one day another agent will be assigned here or like me will find it. Or maybe The X-Files will find him or her. Sometimes I wonder how much of it was beckoning me to find it. There will be others that have the same calling I was sure of that.   
She is warm now.  
"What do you mean by an end, Mulder?" Scully asks. I can't talk to her now I want to wait to let her know.  
"I mean that maybe this time when they close us down maybe I will take a break from it too." Scully takes a deep breath.  
"But how about the conspiracy?"  
"The major players are gone and that cigarette smoking man is dying. Maybe there is no danger anymore. Maybe the aliens are too busy fighting each other to conquer us. During all these decades they haven't come. How can we know it won't take centuries for them to finally arrive? We could give it a shot to that normal life you always talk about."  
"Mulder I wouldn't ask you to leave your calling for me."  
"And you are not asking. I'm offering it...My sister is dead. I have peace knowing that, for the first time in my life. I want to try and be the man I should had been if she wouldn't had been taken." Is a nice thought that you can heal for this kind of wound to a complete recovery. Is a lie, nothing this deep heals completely, but still is nice to think it.  
"You know this wouldn't give me a baby?"  
"I know..." Scully turns around to see his face.  
"Are you sure, Mulder?"  
"You followed me all this years...Now is my turn. I mean I assumed that if you ever got a chance to get out you will take me with you." Silent tears wet her face. I kiss them away. She responds with a small peck in my lips. Her fingers grabbing my chin. I try to keep my hands to myself, but she feels so good this close. I keep grasping under her clothes. We made a deal of never doing anything... Personal during our FBI hours, but the way she is kissing me now is making harder to stay professional.  
"You know what wastes a lot of money?" She whispers in my ear.  
"Paying for a room that no one is using." With that phrase my hands hungrily trace the soft mounds of her body. She was warm and soft and sensual and tempting and joyful and vibrant and funny all at once. The love of my life, the love of my death. The last woman I will ever love whether I die tomorrow or I had lived a thousand years more. I memorize her scent, her voice, her kisses, her legs around me and I wish this moment lasts forever.

* * * 

She is sleeping now in my chest. I drift to a slumber with this primeval wish that I could get her pregnant. Giving her what she wanted the most before I died would had been my perfect last gift. But the God she believed in didn't wanted that. I was tempted to curse him, but on her behalf I could only hope she was right and it was for the best. She did wanted me to be with her when she was raising her child. That is not possible anymore. Maybe that was this universe version of mercy.  
The morning after we receive a call from Billy Miles and upon investigating the disappearances in the woods I found her in the ground. My worst fears confirmed. I noticed the pattern the night before, but didn't wanted to say anything unless it was necessary. Since Billy and the others vanished this has become a missing's persons case so we can go home while the police search for them. It will take a while for them to work out the details so our presence here is not justified until more evidence is unearthed of unexplained circumstances. During the drive I distract Scully with plans places to go.  
"I was thinking that we both have vacation time accumulated. Once we hear the verdict from accounting we could take a trip somewhere until the assign us our new duties." She smiled.  
"I'd like that."  
"Want to go to Germany, visit your brother?" I will like to make amends with Bill before I pass away.  
"That sounds nice...Until Bill knows we are sharing the room." She laughs. Her laugh is beautiful and loud. I want to hear it all the time. I don't want to be the cause of any more tears. But I will be sooner than I wish.  
At the office I relax waiting, thinking on the short time left. I wondered how many people will be happy with us leaving for good this time. How many of them will go to my funeral just to make sure I'm dead. How many will throw a party.   
Skinner comes through the door. I will miss him, he probably will be thankful that his most difficult agent is not longer going to be his problem. But I'm sure he is as fond of me as I am of him. I wish I could tell him, but I know he will ask me to tell Scully and I don't want that.   
He brings unwanted guests. Impulsively I tried to get my hands on Krycek maybe I have the chance to avenge my father's death, before I go. But what he has to say stops me on my tracks. The ship is there to be found and I know I'm the only one that has all the pieces to find their location. Part of me wants to walk away. Take Scully by the hand and run, but what if this is the last chance for the proof I had searched for so long? All those people that no one believed in will be listened to. Justice could start for them. My job will be validated and Scully's sacrifices wouldn't be in vain. I had to go.  
I ask her to stay behind, fearing they will take her from me and I wouldn't be able to find her in time. She understands and ask the only other person in the FBI we both trusts to come with me.   
In the hours I'm with Skinner I feel tempted to say something. Ask him to take care of Scully when I die, but I said nothing. No need to drag the old man either. He also has suffered enough.  
The sensation of being at the end is punching me in my stomach now. Or it might be the proof I always needed. I held on to be the proof. My last days on the planet will at least provide some answers. Maybe there is a God after all.  
What I didn't counted was that it was me who the ship wanted. Why me? After all this time? It might had been the black oil I was exposed to or my constant contact with other abductees, the rubbings, or the artifact or maybe something left in me by Cancerman. I will never know. A sense of doom pull me into the light with the others. At least Scully is safe that is all that matters now. Then I see the face of the alien bounty hunter. I knew this was the last thing I will ever see.


	18. THE HEART OF DARKNESS (During The X-Files episodes: Within, Without, Patience, Roadrunners, Invocation, Redrum, Via Negativa, Surekill, Salvage, Badlaa, The Gift, Medusa, Per Manum.)

They dissect me alive. Removing layers of skin, pieces of my muscle, tissue from my organs. I felt the membranes cut with sharp metal objects. Hot needles piercing me. Metal hooks holding my face. The pain is unbearable. My mind drift in pieces inside my brain. The images of all abductees recollections I read or recorded in my work flash along the pain. The physical and emotional pain is so intense that I mercifully pass out. I regain conscience again when the sharp blades are scrapping my thorax. My lungs exposed. I feel the pain at the edges of my open rib cage. I'm cold, naked and hungry and alone. Only the immutable faces of the aliens looking at me with clinical detachment.   
The drilling inside my mouth is the most frightening. It comes slowly I try to use the little strength I have left to fight it, but I can't move. I feel the pressure in the roof of my mouth when it pricks the skin open. I taste my blood bursting down my throat and I scream in pain when it breaks the bones in my nose and touches the soft tissues inside my skull. I feel it suctioning parts of my brain.  
I hallucinate during those moments I can see Scully sleeping, my screams wake her up. Then I lose her image. Lots of blurry memories of pains I experienced in life. Like my body is cataloging and comparing them with the torture I'm submitted now. The hospital, the infections, the lost fights, the possessions, the madness. All my memories and pains all at once. But this is inhuman torture suffering like nothing I could had experienced on Earth. I feel at the edge of sanity.   
Nothing I do register on the aliens. Their eyes are empty, there is no one there, not a personality or a dream or a fear or pain. Is frightening to see a sentient being incapable of compassion. The lack of empathy is the alien feature. They are living cameras recording what is happening without feeling connection to it. I'm just a thing to work on.   
I know now what Samantha felt when she was getting tested. How little they care, how much of a piece of meat for their purposes they see us. I wish I was there to hold her hand and comfort her. My tears flow now I cry for her for all she had to endure when she was so young, so alone. Part of me feels this is right I'm suffering like she did. It was meant to happen to me anyway. Maybe this was the way the universe balanced it out and the pain she didn't suffered when she was taken by the walks-in was waiting for me. That was strangely comforting. I rather suffer in her place.   
All I can feel now is my limbs getting detached, my veins boiled inside my dermis. Like a wooden doll pull apart and together multiple times. I have no sense of where I am or what is this place. Fragments is all I'm becoming sliced and diced, scattered and burned. I try to keep myself together by thinking on Scully. But I also remember that they did this to her too. I cry for her now for what they do to her. I cry for all the abductees. For Max Fening, for Duane Barry, for Theresa, for Billy. Hundreds of faces cross my mind, I knew their stories as memories, now they are mine too. Now we are one.   
We all bonded by this violation of our bodies, by this searing unnatural pain. We all in this together. Getting abducted myself might be the only fair thing the universe has ever done. I wish I could had saved them from this.   
Now all of me is exposed, my skin open like the petals of a sunflower. Four aliens aiming lights and probes. Working at once in all of my body at the same time. I wouldn't think the human body could handle this for long. I'm going to die, finally. I pray for death to come quickly. I want it to end. Please end it. I try to say but my lips can't move. I can't control anything maybe I'm already dead. Slowly they seal the skin shut putting the rotten skin together in a mesh of flesh without form. I'm still here but I don't feel my body. Is worst than pain, feeling existence without substance. If there is a God please end it now.   
"There is no God...There is only power." A voice in my head talks. I felt its hate, is growing and expanding filling me with poison. A black curtain detaching me from those warm feelings of unity I felt before with the other abductees, with the memories of my life, with my wish to help my fellow humans. All is starting to disconnect now. The indifference of the aliens was transferring itself to me.  
"Humans are the disease of this planet...naked monkeys that should had never left the savanna. Superstitious chimps that think they matter. They don't." It hates us, all of us men, women, young and old. Countries, nations, our religion, our science. Our entire race is just waste.  
"Get away!" I say in my mind. I can feel it pulling inside me, taking over. My limbs start to warm, the heat of this...entity is filling me up. Is like the black oil, it swirls and tastes and licks. I feel disgusted by this invasion. I'm nauseated and I feel so hot I could burn.  
"Humans will be destroyed replaced with perfection. No more wars or crime. Isn't that what you wanted? World peace? Is something beyond your frail humans capacity. You cannot live in harmony and peace. Just in chaos and destruction. We have overcome above those petty needs. And we will spread our safety in your moribund planet before you destroy it all with your humans ambitions." I try to tell them there is more to us. That we have arts and science and beauty and love but I can't muster a coherent argument. My senses are dulling. I can't see where I am I can just hear this voice and feel its bitterness. I try to push it away and scream but I have no strength. I can't even tell where my mouth is, let alone open it to scream.  
"Don't fight it. The pain will end when you relent. Is just a matter of time, you can't win." I feel it pushing me away, moving whatever it is that contains me, from this body. I don't feel I belong to it anymore. Instinctively I try to hold on, but I can't, I'm losing grip.  
"Surrender, be better than human and all your agony will cease...forever." I fight as best, as I can. Holding unto the last lines of my physical body.   
"You remember their violence, their betrayal. Think what they did to Samantha, to you. Let go and let us save the world. The world that is rightfully ours." I'm so weak now. Slowly the voice is stronger than mine. I'm just a murmur, a whisper and then nothing. I fly away holding to a thin line inside me. There is no more pain, or voices or feeling. Just me shut down I float away in the darkness and I see the light on top of me, growing pulling me in. I can feel the clarity like the mouth of a cave. There are shadows in the other side. But before I cross over. I feel soft arms surrounding me, keeping me in place.  
"Samantha?"


	19. STARLIGHT (During and after X-Files Episode: This Is Not Happening.)

I can't see anything, I have no eyes. There is no sound or smell or touch. All there is left of me are pure thoughts, memories and feelings. My heavy body left behind mostly taken by the voice.  
"I'm here, Fox." I feel her love. She anchors me preventing me from going adrift.  
"Am I dead?' I ask not sure what to think.  
"Not yet, not really. This is the starlight. I pulled you in before you left for the other side. I'm sorry you had to go through so much pain, Fox. There is only so much I can do from here." Her voice is warm and comforting like when we were kids and she tried to comfort me after a fall or a bad day at school.  
"Thank you" I feel at peace, there is a heartbeat somewhere, is small is the only sound I can hear in the background.  
"Are mom and dad here?"   
"No. They crossed to the other side long ago."  
"Why didn't you?"  
"I couldn't go without you."  
"I'm sorry I kept you waiting...Are we going now?"  
"It depends on you, Fox. There still work to do. So many greedy eyes coveting our planet, threatening our species. In denial about our right to exist and evolve and grow at our own pace. Forces that don't want our lives to have meaning, but to the universe to forget we even existed. If you leave now, the chance to save humanity might be lost."  
"How I can stop that..? I'm just one."  
"You were never one, Fox. You are one with the pain of millions that needed someone to listen to them. We had done our best to help you and protect you from here. And down in the world you have Scully who has her own guides helping her along the way. If you go back you will have my help too. But that doesn't matter if you don't go back...Is the only way."  
"I'm tired Samantha. So many years looking for you. I couldn't save you. I couldn't help any abductee or victim and Scully lost everything for me, she can do better... The world can do better."  
"Fox, I know you are tired. The burden you carried was heavy. I was also tired when I came here. I also had a choice to move on, to rest, to forget about the world and live in peace for all eternity. But I choose you and you choose me when you didn't forget. The fight is still raging and they need us. Is not time to rest this is when you matter the most." Part of me thinks this is just another hallucination. I cannot be this important. I was mocked and unwanted in my life. There is no way I can delude myself that I can save Earth. But the other part wonders who else will do this if I say no? No one else cared as much or was crazy enough to go against this giant forces. The ones that had the truth had chosen to save themselves at the cost of others. Maybe this loser is all our species has left. Shouldn't at least try?  
"If I go back...I will lose you again..." Without my body I can't call it pain but it feels like I'm asking to remove a vital piece of myself and is even more excruciating. The feeling of being incomplete in the most purest form.  
"I will always be with you, Fox." My noble self makes the choice for me. I can't turn my back on the truth not even now after death. I choose to come back and fight with Scully and hope somehow that is enough.  
"I will never forget you."  
"Just remember one thing. Not matter how much darkness surround you, find the light, follow the light."  
"I love you, Samantha..."  
"I love you Fox, forever..."   
I feel sinking, falling inside the darkness, but a light embraces me and slowly, I start to feel heavy, solid. The pain hits me again. Is not piercing, invasive, final. It feels dull and achy, human pain of a body that is healing. I can feel a hand in mine and I know exactly who is it even before I open my eyes.  
There she is by my side. I'm home.   
"Scully." She is even more beautiful that I remember her. Her hair is framing her face like a portrait and she has that glow on her that makes her look like an angel. Had I ever looked at her with the pureness of this moment? But she is so sad, broken. How many tears had she shed? How many because of me? I don't want to see her like this. I will make her smile.  
"Who are you?"   
She seems to like my joke I can see on her face that her journey here has not been easier than mine. I feel so sad I was not there with her. I want to clean her tears but I can't move yet. I feel heavy, inert. She tells me some details and a doctor comes to check me. I notice she stays sitting letting him work. Checking my stats and my IV. That seems strange I remember that she usually is more hands on when I'm like this. Maybe I'm remembering wrong.  
My eyes hurt unused for so long, but I think I can read she is trying to hide something. She whispers to the doctor and he asks the nurse to leave. She takes my hand again.  
"Oh Mulder....I have so many things to tell you. So much has happened. I have a new partner in The X-Files which was very convenient because he helped us to find you, but also because I can't really work in the same capacities on the field." She smile through her tears but I read happiness...I wonder what she is hiding?   
"Because something wonderful has happened, the miracle we prayed for." She smiles wide now but I can barely understand. My brain is still finding its place in my skull.  
"And as we planned no one knows...Your involvement." She looks down giving me a coy look. I like that her mood is improving.   
"I'm pregnant." She said I don't understand. She stands up and her belly is swollen. I don't understand how that happened. It was impossible.   
“Did you found more stored ova? Or you got some donor eggs?” I guessed they still had some samples stored of my contribution she must had used them while I was gone.   
“No, Mulder this baby is a miracle conceived against all my chances...the old-fashioned way” She whispers.   
I feel like I could barf. They must had taken her again while I was gone. Start another phase of their experiments. The pieces of my brains are together enough to start with my paranoia.  
"Mulder, are you okay?" Scully ask I want to try to fake that I'm happy but I can't.  
"I'm sorry I just don't know what to say..." She nod slightly and sits down again.  
"Is okay we have plenty of time. You are back, that is all that matters" She kisses my cheek. I remember the nursery all this elderly women used as incubators. None of them recalled they even were pregnant. Their memories stolen or manipulated somehow. How long will she has before they come to harvest?  
"How far along?" She seems happy that I'm asking.  
"27 weeks...but we can't talk about this now. You should try to get some sleep. The doctor will want to run some more tests." I feel my eyelids heavy. I'm still weak. She seems so calm, so happy. They drugged her well. If she think this was naturally conceived they could have done it while I was going to Raleigh. They have the technology. They could had waited until she fell sleep, drug her so she wouldn't wake up and worked on her. She wouldn't remember anything and I wouldn't have been there to do my usual checks ups for missing time or fresh scars for alien tests. We were probably sloppy, they found out somehow she was sexually active again so they could have a cover up. I'm so stupid, this is my fault. If I kept my dick out of this she would had been safe. I should had been back sooner. I remember all she went through with Emily. I don't want to see her again through that pain. She sits again in her chair closing her eyes to fall sleep. I look at her freely. She does looks beautiful just like I imagined if she were carrying my child. I push away the thought, I can't let them manipulate me too. Scully's memories were obviously tampered with. I feel tired, I need to regain my strength and Scully needed me sane in order to find the truth. Her hand is in mine and I squeeze it. I try to fall sleep.   
I'm broken I feel so fragmented, pieces of me floating on the darkness putting my self together. I can remember some of the torture wherever they took me. But my human memories are muddied I can see them but I can't connect with them. Like seeing the life of a stranger. I recall this is a side effect of the abduction process and it takes some time to adjust. I do my best to forget them. I know something happened in between my abduction and coming back but I can't remember is just a hunch and whatever it was it felt good. Maybe a near death experience. I wish I could remember. But I'm back and I need to focus in what matters: Scully and what is going to happen to her and her baby.


	20. SPECTRUM (During and After X-files Episode: Deadalive, Three Words.)

Scully tells me the news that I'm healed from the disease that was killing me. Somehow I knew it I'm still putting things together in my mind. Scully's safety and well-being is the only thing I'm worried about. There is a part of me that wants to believe the baby is ours and normal. She seems convinced, but I can't relax if I'm wrong Scully could die, get killed while they harvest the fetus or die of a broken heart. I have flashes of my abduction, the drilling the pain I do my best not to think of them. I have work to do.  
I come back home is just like I left it but there is something different there. Everything is different. I feel like a stranger in my house. Scully is so eager to get me back to where I was. But can I? After all it happened I feel changed. I still can see the faces of the aliens impassive to my pain. And I feel like them now insensible. I wish it away but it won't happen this fast, it never does. There is also this pressing sensation that a lot more happened before I came back but I can't know what is it. My memory fails or my brain is saving me from the worst memories, I'm not sure. I mumble some congratulations about an answered prayer and as soon as the words leave my mouth I can see that I hurt her. I need to remember that she is convinced everything is okay. Is me that needs proof now. I try to apologize and she as usual is understanding. But the hurt I caused is still behind her eyes.   
She practically moves in my apartment helps me with food and check I'm okay. The first night I'm there I wake up screaming.  
"It's okay Mulder...you are home, you are safe." She is sitting next to me. Her hand on my forehead.  
"Scully?"   
"Yes. They are not here. You are home."   
"Thanks" I want to ask her to lay down next to me but I can't. I'm still afraid of the truth she is carrying inside her. I hold her hand and I slip back to sleep. I wake up in the morning to find her still asleep in the chair. She seems uncomfortable. I carry her on bed carefully not to wake her up. Her belly brushes me and I feel a movement. A primal impulse pulls me towards it, wants me to care.  
"There is a baby inside her." My brain screams. But I still doubt, my paranoia pushes it away. I check the computer. Try to read the news of the last months see what has changed. I read the paranormal boards and the alien abduction groups. Nothing different still the same people, the same fears no one has advanced my work in my absence. I feel discouraged I thought when I left someone else will take over. Not for this months at least. The board that posts scans of the lone gunmen newspaper shows that my friends tried to help. The first three months they put my picture, my last whereabouts and even a reward for information. I wonder how many scammers called them? They did an obituary. I can't read it. It has stamp that reads. NEVERMIND. I think is supposed to be funny. I can't tell, my emotions are dulled out, I'm only paranoia and my love and worry for Scully. They then talk about my miraculous return in the last number. They seem happy and eager to have me back to fight the good fight. I smile to myself. Someone else did missed me.  
"Mulder...Are you okay?" I hear Scully say.   
"Yes, I just slept enough I was trying to get acquainted with this brand new world." I say pointing at the screen. She smiles slightly, her eyes still hurting.  
"I told them to wait a few days to see you. I wanted to make sure you will be up to it." She seems cautious, like she is afraid of me. I hate the distance between us. Last time we were together we were so close and so happy. I want that back.  
"I think I can handle that in a few days. Will call them soon." I want her to see me as she saw me before I left with light and love. I ask her to talk to me, tell me how things had changed. My paranoia starts to over think again when she talks about her new partner. The man was assigned by Kersh right after I was abducted, he could be a plant. Trying to destroy my work from within. Scully doesn't think so. I want to believe her but I can't, not yet. I find strange so many efforts were spent locating me. I thought they will be happy to get rid of me.  
"Mulder the people on top might dislike you, but you still impressed a lot of agents with your work...Although Skinner thinks that they are just afraid what you can divulge if you were to fall in the wrong hands..."   
I heard that before I do have a photographic memory after all and I did worked in many prominent cases. It makes some sense they made sure I was dead, if anything to know I was finally out of the way.  
The days pass right fast I can feel more pieces coming together. Skinner visits he seem to notice the tension between us. The last time the three of us were together he could tell things were great. Will I ever be the man she met again? The man she needs? The father for her child if this baby is meant to be?   
I feel strong enough to go to work. There was a man who got killed with Doggett in tow. I distrust him even more. I already was assigned a partner that seemed straightforward and I ended up losing my father, my freedom and almost everything to him. I was going to be more cautious this time. Especially since Scully was there with him.  
Scully helps me to bend the rules once she feels I might be onto something. I'm happy to see things slowly back to normal. I call the gunmen and they help me decode the computer but, Scully told them something about the baby and they don't want to help me break in. I can't believe she is doing this telling everyone. Is she that sure? I don't listen I have work to do. As soon as she leaves I talk to my friends.  
"Why are you siding with her? You know this is important?" Frohike talks first.  
"Mulder you are like a brother to us you know that. But you weren't here when you were taken, when we thought you die." He is almost in tears.  
"It was hard for us, but you should had seen Scully...She tried to be strong but you could she was suffering..."  
"Never saw a woman that broken especially not someone like Scully and in the end she didn't even made it about her..."  
"What do you mean?" Langly was going to say something when Frohike holds his shoulder and shakes his head. They start to gather their stuff. Byers is the last to speak.  
"You two need to talk..." They leave and Scully comes back. Reluctantly she gives me new information to enter the computer given to her by her new partner. I don't trust the guy but I can't risk not getting what we need. And I don't have time to waste, history has shown they are very good at destroying the evidence. I wish I could stay long enough to try to comfort Scully to make her feel better about this but I can't. The stakes are high, if this group was willing to break into the White House it must had been a life and death situation. I'm the only one that knows this, the only one that cares.

* * * 

I kiss her forehead before I jump out of the car.  
"I'll come back...I always do, don't I? I'm such a pest that not even death wants me." I said winking. She smiles faintly, the hurt on her eyes still there.   
Turns out that it was a trap and her new partner comes to save me. I'm not sure how I feel about him, but I think he might not be so bad. Scully thanks him and I nod towards him acknowledging the gesture. I get to her apartment to get the laptop see if there is any clue or if it was all a trap. She needs to run some errands before the store closes. Nothing is useful all of it is encrypted and no way to find out. I really want to go home. The anger bubbling up inside me. I was set up, but for what reason? I have only being back for a few weeks. In any case that can wait. There was also many things I needed to research about Scully's pregnancy, but I will need to use other methods since the office seems to be occupied. I don't trust Doggett enough to let him know my suspicious and even if I did he is more skeptic than Scully was. A huge assessment coming from her.   
I decide to stay until she comes back I need to ask Scully for some of her tests so I can start my research. The moment she opens the door she can see something on my face.  
"Mulder what's wrong?" I try to be calm.  
"Nothing. I'm just a bit worried about you...about the baby. I heard you had a difficult pregnancy. How is everything going?" She smiles again I guess she is happy I'm talking about it at all.   
"Yeah it has been rough but this little one is a fighter just like mom, just like D...you" She omits the word Dad. I never felt more like a jerk in my life. She knows I'm unsure.  
"I kind of starving now so I want to eat something, but I have copies of my records if you want to see them." I nod, that makes thing easier to see what could be missing. She brings a box and produces four or five thick folders.  
"Here are all the tests. Now I need to cook something before I faint." She goes to the kitchen, lets me review them alone. Blood tests, amniotic fluid, sonograms. All normal I memorize the name of the clinic to see what I can find about them. There are also a few papers about the chances of women to conceive naturally after menopause. Even though hormonally Scully never when through it this is the closest to anovulatory periods she could study. Rare, but not impossible. Dr Parenti's report about the possibility that the treatments to prepare her uterus might allowed to release some viable eggs that weren't extracted...Unlikely but the only scientific explanation. I shook my head this is the sort of conclusion that will be right in a normal world. But in this planet of conspirators and lies there other less scientific, but more likely explanations. I find something I never imagine I would see. A report from the office Dr Heitz Werber. Scully submitted herself to a detailed regression to look at ten days. The approximate date of conception. The report for each day is strange though it's only the summary: No evidence of repressed or stolen memories or time loss. Signed by the doctor. She places a glass of ice tea next to me and sits down with her own glass and the biggest plate of food I had seen her eating.  
"You went through a regression?" She frowns.  
"Well yes. We know this people can tamper with human fluids and tissue and of course memories. I covered all the physical evidence but I needed to probe my memories. I thought if anyone could find anything abnormal would be him and you always trusted him... I mean isn't what you had done?"   
The weight of her words crushes me. Whatever pieces of me left floating, rush back towards me. I let all the memories of our time together shower me and I embrace all the emotions that come with it. The pain, the loss, the longing for that child. I hug her thigh next to me her belly rubbing against my stomach. I feel the baby move against me and I don't shy away.  
"I'm such an idiot. I should had know that you wouldn't be so sure if you wouldn't had tried everything." She holds me back.  
"Mulder is okay, is okay. I know what is like. To feel so different after returning. I've been there remember?" She said, her eyes full of compassion.   
"The weeks and months after an abduction are always the hardest..." I kiss her lips not minding the food she still has on her mouth. I just want to feel her like I did before I left. My whole self finally ready to embrace her again. To embrace her miracle, our miracle.   
"You are going to have our baby" I whisper on her ear. I recall the feeling of happiness I lost so long ago. I kiss her lips again slowly and then deeper I never needed her as much as I do now. She kisses me back for a moment but when my arms surround her she stops.  
"Mulder...Mulder stop." She pulls back her mouth from me. But still holds me.  
"I'm having a high-risk pregnancy and the doctor told me not to...well you know..."   
"Is okay I just want to kiss you...I haven't in such a long time.." She smiles and kisses me back. My lips drinking from her soft lips. I thought I would never do that again. I'm almost shaking. We are together again and she is having what she wanted the most. I gave it to her somehow, there was mercy for us.  
"Well you just want to kiss me, but my body is not registering the just kissing part...,” she said, her quick breathing reminding me of all those nights and days we spent together. I slow down the kissing to a stop.  
"Not even born and junior is already ruining our sex life." She giggles.  
"Mulder!" She frowns and slaps me slightly. Her eyes are light again. The hurt disappeared. We were going to be fine. I smile as I see her walk to the kitchen and bringing a bag.  
"You can entertain your mouth with that for the moment." She winks. It was a bag of sunflower seeds. I blow a kiss to her and start eating them.  
She eats voraciously. She is usually never with this appetite. I like this, seeing her feeding herself with such hunger. I stare at her, she notices.  
"I'm eating like a pig aren't I?"   
"You look beautiful, tempting. Pregnancy becomes you." She smiles. The salad dressing is dribbling slowly from her chin. I cleaned it with my napkin. My body responds with arousal. I try to distract myself. It was time to wait again for a few months for Scully and the baby's sake. Harder to do now that I know what I was missing. But easier because is for our baby. Our baby, our baby I can barely believe it myself. I try to focus on the baby. I check some sonograms and remembered the hypnotherapist report.  
"This report is very brief though, they are usually are more detailed." I mention. She groans.  
"That is just the summary. The detailed report is on his office. Hopefully to never see the light of day." Her face turns darker. I frown. She bites her lips mortified.  
"...It turns out that my subconscious seems to have no filter and is very detailed...The doctor's assistant told me that if I ever retire from the FBI I have a promising career as a erotica writer." Her face is almost inside the plate. I can't help but laugh loudly. She grunts embarrassed.  
"Damn! Why I always have to die during the fun parts?"   
"Mulder, shut up!" She finish eating and I help her clean up. I tell her to sit and rest while I do my share of help. I spent more time than I should peering at her, sitting in the couch reading, her hand on her belly. She looks perfect, so perfect I'm sad I missed so much of it, but glad I came back on time to see some of it at least. I sit down to talk. She tells me a lot about the last months. I try to cheer her on the sad parts. His partner seems to have saved her life in a few occasions. I still don't like the guy but I'm glad he was there keeping her safe when I couldn't.  
She talks about some superstitions and her mom's plans; she wants to throw her a baby shower.  
"I'm sorry you can't come. But Skinner's assistant is attending if you so much bring the ice she will have an advantage on the pool."   
"Pool?"  
"They have a pool about who is my baby's father." Her smile fades. I knew she was not happy with people meddling on her private life, especially this time.  
"I'm sorry..."   
"Well I was expecting as much. There is always one going in the Hoover building." She smiles a bit now.  
"Skinner is number one...I guess they watched the movie." I cringe remembering that train wreck.  
"Oh...Who else is?"  
"Well of course you. A very close second place I believe." I can't help but laugh, Skinner might find Scully attractive like any sensible man within two meters of her does. But he always respected their professional relationship too much to say or try anything. Although, I suspect he guessed that our closeness might mean something else. Probably before neither of us did.  
"Second place to Skinner...Man that hurts!"  
"Danny, is in a distant third...I had never even see him in person. How did they even added him?" She rolls her eyes.  
"So any man anywhere near you could be a candidate?"   
"Sort of...Fourth and fifth is IV and ONS and last place is One of the three funny looking guys that visited her once or twice." That is too much and I laugh. She grunts.   
"Has anyone dare to ask you?"   
"They wouldn't want me to shoot them."   
"But, your mom knows, right?"  
"She has hinted and I haven't deny it, but I haven't told her either. The fewer people know the easier to keep the secret."   
"Bill?"   
"He will had dug you out of that grave himself, just to kill you again,” she said laughing so hard that the echo runs around the room.   
"Do you want me to bet against me? To throw then off?"   
"Oh Mulder that is just evil..." She considers it a second "...but better not push our luck. These are all investigators after all. You betting might make them more eager to look further than the water cooler talk. Thank you for offering, though."  
"My pleasure."  
"But you can come to Lamaze classes if you are interested. According to the pamphlet friends can be birthing coaches and the classes are first come and first serve so no one will know we were even there." I gladly accept happy that we get to do something together in preparation for our child.   
I keep her company until she falls asleep in my arms. I should had trusted her judgment, not only as a scientist but as a mother to be. She should know if there was something wrong. Why it was so hard to admit that a miracle could happen? Maybe because I don't think God will want to help me? But he will help her even if he has to use my crackpot self for it. And God did responded I will have to make peace with that idea. That maybe there is a God and that maybe he even does loves me.


	21. INHERITANCE (During and After X-Files Episode Empedocles.)

I decided to visit my childhood home. My sister had a favorite doll. It belonged to our grandmother and she passed it onto her. I know my mom kept it in the attic. Never wanting to see it, but no ready to let it go. I was thankful she kept it. They didn't find it on the ashes of the things she burned when she ... I was hoping it was still there.  
The house I grow up in feels so strange now, distant, cold. Even my bachelor's apartment seems more warm. I go through the things left behind and find the doll.   
"Samantha" This name brings about the memories of her happiness in the starlight and a subtle phrase fills my head. Follow the light.   
I sit in the shadows, thinking on how much of my family this child will know. The doll is about the only thing here that brings me joy. The house is full of lies and darkness. It used to be hard to sit here, but now is just an old house I feel no connection to. I'm going to sell it. I don't want my child to visit it ever. I think about a clean slate, start anew with my family with Scully. I pack the doll and close the house. I will call an agent first thing in the morning. Sell it as fast as I can. I don't want to come back. I remember our plans I could feel that I could leave The X-Files behind now. I will have a new mission: be the best father I could be. The father I always wanted to have.   
I wrap the doll and bring it to Scully, sadly she has to go to the hospital. The nurse annoys me asking me if I was the husband. I guess is better than asking me if I'm the father I wouldn't be able to admit to that and that will feel worst. Scully has me on his list of people who can make medical decisions if needed, but they will need a few hours to do the paperwork. So I wait, while that happens I met another agent friends with Doggett and Scully. She met me before when I was dead. Is interesting that I should like her right away. She is like me open to new ideas and the paranormal, but she annoys me with her persistence. I wonder if I annoy everyone like her too? Possibly.   
She lets me know that Doggett also lost someone: his son. It might be because I'm about to be a father but whatever doubts or fears I have for this man are gone the second I see his boy's corpse. If Samantha's loss wrecked me I cannot imagine what losing a child would do to me.   
Even after he smashes me in anger against the wall I do my best to help him. That is fair payback and I would had probably reacted the same way. Monica seems to be blind to the hurt on his eyes when she talks about the case. But then she knows him better, maybe this is the only way with him? Still can't help to throw the man a bone and let him off the hook.  
I can finally see Scully and she seems doing well, it was just a scare. I touch her belly for the first time and I can feel our child inside. Alive, growing. I have no words. I felt happy, before months ago when Scully and I were together when like Levin says in Anna Karenina: He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. But this was beyond happiness this was pure bliss. I couldn't wait to meet him or her.   
She tells me about Doggett too. That he is worth it. I think I can see it now. If Scully thinks Doggett is a good man and a good agent I will believe it. No more doubts from me. I need to open his eyes to what he is getting into so I can leave The X-files in the best hands I can.  
He seemed more hardened than Scully more skeptic and he was older too.   
"Can't teach an old dog, new tricks." But as sure as hell can try.   
Dinner with the pizza was nice. I finally gave her the doll and she seems to like it. We are back to our old selves. Making jokes and watching a movie or at least I do. She is so tired that she fell asleep half way. Is amazing how light she still is baby and all. I put her to bed make sure she is safe and comfortable and go home. I wish I could stay but is better to try to not overdo it. I do wonder how long can we keep the secret? If that kid is born with my nose there will be no doubts. I go to bed trying to imagine how our child will look like. I miss Scully next to me, but I know is just for a short while.   
“Soon we will be together. The three of us. Soon.”


	22. SABBATH (After X-Files Episodes: Vienen, Alone, Essence, Existence.)

They kiss until William starts to fuzz. They laugh.  
"In case I wasn't clear, I love you Dana Scully, I have always loved you and I always will." He says looking into her eyes. Feeling so liberated that he finally could say it out loud. She smiles back.  
"I love you Fox Mulder, I have always loved you and I always will" They both smile. Baby William starts crying. Mulder looks at him.  
"I love you too William and I always will." He kisses his forehead.  
"We love you, William." She says kissing him too. She takes him back and sits on the bed to feed him. Mulder sits next to her. Soaking in seeing her Scully and their child together, happy just like he dreamed off, just like what he prayed for. There was a God after all. He listened to him and gave him the family he never thought he had a right to want. They were safe and happy and together. Their own little family.   
Scully felt the baby drinking from her breast. Feeding himself with her body. Such a natural thing and yet so strange. How long did she dreamed with this thinking it won't happen for her? She looked at Mulder. How many years had she seen only darkness and fear on his eyes? So many, now they were both two stars in his face. Hope replacing paranoia. Light replacing darkness. She always wanted to take away Mulder's pain, she thought she would if he learned the truth but all he needed was to love and be loved back. Now they were both loved, safe, hopeful and complete. Life couldn't had worked out any better.   
When she was done feeding and burping William, she feels his diaper.   
"Oops time for a change." She says.  
"Let me do it." Mulder ask. She frowns slightly.  
"You know how?"  
"Oprah..." He answers she gives the baby to him and hands him the diapers and the wipes. Her phone rings and she goes to the other room keeping an eye on Mulder and the baby. Is a bit messier than he expected but after using probably too many wipes William is clean and dry. He puts the diaper on, the onesie was still clean so he buttons it back. He holds him and sits on the bed, cradling him on his chest. He is sleep again already. He looks at him so beautiful and peaceful and warm and tiny. A tiny miracle.  
"I'm impressed." Scully says. He beams.  
"Who was it?" He asks, casually.  
"Oh that was Monica she told me that everyone that put money on you be the father already cashed it." He frowns.  
"How did they know?" Scully sits, she is carrying a glass of water.  
"Well I imagine they never expected official confirmation anyway, but the fact that you were the one in the hospital with me probably was enough proof. Neither Skinner, Danny or the gunmen were there with us. Occam's razor." She shrugged.  
"I'm sorry..."  
"Is okay I'm not as concerned anymore. I mean CGB Spender is dead, for real this time. He hasn't been seen in almost a year. We are both out of The X-Files so the danger I was afraid for him and for us seem to has passed"   
"You are just accepting it too easy...It's not like you." She opened her eyes wide. She shrugged.  
"There is also that we are only one visit to the hospital away from getting a biological confirmation." Mulder frowns.  
"Baby William here inherited your rare blood type. There are approximately other 5% of people in this city and for that matter the planet that share it. Only half of them are men. Probably more than half of them are too young or too old to be his father...I mean denying it at this point will just bring more attention. I probably will go back to Quantico anyway so is not like I'm going to be bumping into our old coworkers anytime soon. By the time I see them they all hopefully have moved on to gossip over some other agent's private life." She shrugged. Mulder reached for her free hand.  
"So are we going to be officially together now? I get to go to family parties and all that?" He said lifting his eyebrows. He couldn't hide his excitement. Scully felt strangely calmed about this, is like everything was falling into place on its own.  
"I guess...If you want to..."  
"Sure, I don't want anyone to think I'm a deadbeat dad. I know you were planning to officially be a single mother so if this is okay with you..."   
"Sure, sure...I do resent people found out on their own. I liked the idea of having a little secret for ourselves only." Her eyes are lost in the distance.  
"We have plenty of secrets,” he said squeezing her hand.  
"I will be baptizing William in short. Would you like to be there for that?" Scully would had been happy either way. The fact that she had Mulder back so she could ask was just too good already.  
"Sure, I had been to a Catholic Church before and I didn't burst into flames." She giggled.   
"You'll have to take a class though, there are some questions..." Scully started to fold some of the baby's clothes.  
"Wouldn't be a problem that we are not married?" Mulder wondered about that. He didn't knew a lot about Catholic teachings, but it seemed something they should frown upon.  
"Although the church does thinks that being born from a valid marriage is for the best interest of the child. Being an unwed mother is not a sin. I know is kind of confusing but is one of those theological technicalities..." She took a gulp of her water.  
"Because I want to marry you...if you want to..." Scully coughed up the water she was drinking. Took a second look.  
"Are you serious?" Was this his idea of a joke?  
"I wanted to ask before I was taken, but I never felt it was the right moment..." He was dead serious and not baking out. He will take a not or a yes for an answer. He knew in the end Scully loved him anyway.  
"I thought you wouldn't want that." Scully said confused. She felt that after his divorce from Diana he was done with the whole thing. But then things had changed for him too.  
"I know we don't need a piece of paper. I do think of you as my wife already. I know is presumptuous and egocentric of me to think that way, but is how I feel." Scully liked to hear that. She never even thought about it, but now that he said the words it felt like it should had been something they talked about long ago.  
"And if you want logical reasons. It will save us time and paperwork, especially once our son starts to go to school, to swimming lessons or any hospital visit." He remembered the rude nurse keeping him away from Scully because he was not her husband. Didn't wanted to repeat that experience ever. Scully smiled. She couldn't picture him doing anything traditional.  
"Mulder, are you proposing?" Mulder stood up and started to kneel in front of Scully. She felt suddenly embarrassed.  
"Oh My God! Stop that!" She said with a nervous laugh. Mulder proposing to her was not something she was envisioned before. This was a deep change for him and if she was honest with herself this is something she would had preferred too if possible. Mulder tried to keep the same expression. At least now he won't regret never asking when he could.  
"Sorry, I just thought on asking. I just didn't want you to think I didn't wanted to..." Scully thought that Mulder was reading her reaction wrong. She pulled him to sit next to her.  
"I meant stop the kneeling." She smiled wide. Mulder's heart grew three times its size.  
"Dana Scully...Would you marry me?"   
"Well... I'm not going to wear a ring, or take your name, and definitely I'm not wearing white..." Mulder looked amused. Typical Scully.  
"Scully, are you saying yes?"  
"Yes, Mulder, Yes." They kiss and hug for a long while.  
"It might be the hormones but...I kind of like the idea to have one little secret the FBI can't make pools about."   
"Okay we will get a confidential marriage...We can apply for the license first thing in Monday."  
"Why so fast?"  
"Why wait?"  
"I guess after taking it so slow it feels so strange to rush things, don't you think?"  
"A bit yeah...but it will better to do it before the Christening. Unless you want to wait?"  
"I'm not sure, we haven't even really lived together... Isn't that a bad idea?" Mulder stood up and looked at his watch. It was past ten in the night.  
"Well we can still live together for the days we need to wait, see if you change your mind when you see that I still squeeze the toothpaste down the middle." He grinned, put his jacket on.   
"Are you serious?"  
"Yeah I also don't want to be without you or William for more than a second ever again." He went to kiss her again.  
"I will be back before you wake up...Are you two going to be alright?" Scully was amused by the idea that Mulder was going to be more protective. She pointed out at the gun under her pillow.  
"That is my girl!" He kissed her again and left for his apartment. 

* * * 

Scully woke up to the sound of Mulder putting everything in the living room including his fishes. It seems that two people were helping him to put the boxes and luggage inside. He tipped them and they wave at her. She should by all means be scared but it felt so right to have him here. Mulder looked at the pile, then at her.  
"Honey...we are going to need a bigger house." He said smiling looking at how everything crowded on her hall.  
"Let's get marry first, we can talk about where we are going to live later. Come to bed with me." Mulder got ready for bed. He put his toothbrush in a cup in her sink. Thinking how this little act felt so big. They will never have to be apart anymore.   
Scully sat on the bed seeing her baby sleep thinking how good life was to them. Thinking how eight years ago if someone had told her that she was going to marry her crazy, but cute coworker and have a child with him she would had call it the biggest miss in the history of clairvoyance. She was happy to see how wrong she would had been.   
"Isn't he beautiful?" Mulder said staring at him.  
"Yes..."  
"Just like you..." Mulder finished kissing her hair. They snuggled together in bed and fell sleep peacefully.

* * * 

The morning after they were dealing with Mulder's things. Scully sat in the table with William on her lap. Mulder was sitting with a notebook. Making a list of things they will need in this new chapter of their lives. Probably try to go house shopping as soon as Scully felt up to it. Moving closer to Quantico seemed to be a no-brainer given that she was going to be working there.   
“Are you sure you want to do the stay at home dad thing?” She asked being a little suspicious of how Mulder will handle the baby all alone.   
“Is not that hard. I will just feed the baby pizza and watch cartoons all day with him. Best upbringing ever.” He grinned. Scully laughed at the obvious joke.  
“And when I take him to the park and another parent gets close to him and says What a cute baby. I will kick them out of the way. Get my gun out point at them and yell: Who send you! See? You cannot hire that kind of help.” Mulder was in stitches. Scully rolled her eyes.   
“Great! I'm stuck with the most paranoid husband ever. I'll have my mom teach you some parenting etiquette before I have to bust you and the baby out of jail for assault...” She laughed slightly and went to the kitchen to prepare something to eat. He heard the baby fussing.  
"I got it" Mulder yelled. When she was done he found Mulder reading to him.   
"Hi."  
"He was fussing a little and I thought reading to him something will relax him...I think he likes it,” he said smiling. The book was Moby Dick the same copy her father used to read to her. Scully sat down to hear what part was it.  
“Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.  
Consider all this; and then turn to the green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!”   
Scully liked the way his voice sounded talking to their child. William seemed to fall sleep and Mulder placed him back on his bassinet.   
"William won't feed in a few hours. I'm going to take a bath..." She moved towards the bathroom. She felt Mulder behind her surrounding her with his arms.  
"Can I join you..? I promise I'll be good,” he said kissing her neck.   
"Okay" She prepared the water and once it was ready got in. Mulder waited until she was settled to see if they both fit. He slid a leg inside and let go a girly scream.  
"Yeehaa!...Is this a bath or you are cooking a lobster?" Scully splashed him.  
"Wuss." He managed to enter the water and Scully hug him under the foam. It felt so good for both of them to be cuddling naked like they did last time a year ago. Just the contact of their skins was soothing for both.  
"Scully?"  
"Hmm?  
"What do you think it will be William's first word?"  
"Normally is mama, papa or dada. Classic theories state that the sound m is easier for babies to make because they tend to do so when their mouths are fastened to a bottle or breast. But some others say d is easier because doing so doesn’t require him or her to force air through the nose. Is not surprise that across cultures the words for parents tend to use the repeated sounds ma, da and pa to facilitate babies communication."  
"I think is going to be UFO."  
"What! No."  
"My fist word was JFK"  
"Seriously?"  
"Yep"  
"Mulder?  
“Hmm?”  
“You are weird..."  
"You are just realizing that now?"   
"I was in denial" They both laugh at the silliness of everything. When did they ever had a chance to relax like this? Without the past haunting them or the present wrecking them. Just the future,whatever future they could imagine just one blink of an eye away from materializing.  
"Mulder?"  
"Do you think William needs a middle name?"  
"Do you want to name him Ahab?"  
"Ugh! No"  
"Ishmael?"  
"Moby Dick is for pets and nicknames."  
"So which one?"  
"I like Samuel." That was the feminine form of Samantha. Mulder kissed her hair.  
"I like Samuel too."   
“Scully?”  
“Hmm?”  
"You were right about this bath thing being really relaxing"  
"When I had been wrong?" She chuckles at the thought of throwing his favorite phrase back at him.  
"Never Scully, never. You have always being right. Ever since the day you were born."  
"And don't you forget it."   
When the water was getting cold they got out. Dried each other and got ready for bed together. William woke up was fed and all three went back to sleep. They dreamed about houses and dogs and trips and picnics and a red-headed child learning to walk towards dada, with mama's help.


	23. HEGIRA (Before X-Files Episode: Nothing important happened today I)

(Before X-Files Episode: Nothing important happened today I)

Mulder was making breakfast while I was feeding William in the kitchen's chair.  
"Can I be dressed as Elvis?"  
"No."  
"Can someone dressed as Elvis marry us?"  
"No."  
"Can I play Elvis music?"  
"No."  
"Oh come on Scully, one little Elvis thing, just one. It's going to be the most special day of my life," he said batting his eyelashes. He placed the dishes in front of me. Baby William was done feeding I put him on the bassinet next to my seat and drank my orange juice. I thought about it. What will look less embarrassing twenty years from now?  
"Okay...You can wear an Elvis tie. Just that." I said, Mulder pouted.  
"Mulder,we are trying to make this marriage a secret, drawing attention to yourself will defeat the purpose." He took a bite of toast, while he mumbled between his teeth. The door bell rang. He got up to open it.  
"I knew you were going to be a party-pooper wife..." I playfully throw a pillow at him. He turned around to pick it up when the door exploded open. Billy Miles went through it and threw a punch on Mulder's chest. His heart was on his hand in second, a bloody pulp still beating. He immediately beheaded him and left.   
"Mulder! No!" I went to him, but by the time I held him his face was rotten with worms, flies and maggots. Putrid in my hands with all his limbs dissolving. I woke up screaming.  
"Mulder!" He was next to me.  
"Scully what is wrong?" He said. I held onto him.  
"Oh Mulder...It was so real..." The drops from my eyes were falling thick and heavy. I cried like I cried when I found him dead on that field not long ago.   
"It's okay...It was just a nightmare." He held me, but I couldn't shake the feeling that he was in danger. I heard the door ringing.   
"Do you expect company?" He asked. It was Sunday morning I normally go to church so no one that knows me visits me this early and I doubted the news of Mulder moving with us was going to be known already so people will look for him here. Mulder got my extra gun on his hand ready to go off. I got mine and took the baby with me.Praying this was not my dream becoming true.  
"Who is it?" Mulder said.  
"Is Deputy Director Kersh...Please open up. We don't have much time." I sat down and put my gun next to me and William's bassinet on top of it. Mulder put his behind him. Mulder opened the door.  
"If you are bringing a present we will need a stroller soon." Kersh was not looking good. He was always stoic, but his face was sweaty and you could see that he hasn't been sleeping. I also know he as a policy of never visiting the residency of any of the agents under him. This couldn't be good. My heart was beating three times as fast. He closed the door behind him, not before peering out, to make sure no one was coming behind him.  
"Agent Mulder, Agent Scully...I guess congratulations are in order. May I sit?" Mulder crossed his arms. He was never fond of him. I offered him the coach.  
"I know in the past we have had our differences. But I was never doing anything I didn't feel it was my duty to the FBI.... Because at the time I perceived they were a threat to the integrity of the institution." He stopped and clear his throat.  
"I never wished ill to any of you agents. I thought the FBI methods were incorruptible. But I've been proven wrong in the worst possible way." He looked at my sleeping child. Compassion filling his face.   
"Please can you just spit it out?" I said before Mulder told him all I could see on his face he was thinking. Kersh gave Mulder a folder. He opened and check it out quickly.  
"What is this?"  
"What do you think it is?" Kersh responded defiantly. He has never held his tongue like Skinner did sometimes when Mulder was not in the mood to behave. I opened my hand to take it. He begrudgingly gave it to me.  
"You recognize them, don't you?" Kersh said. My heart almost came to a stop when I saw the pictures. Forensic pictures of all the abductees that were found in the compound. The ones Jeremiah Smith had healed. Beheaded, their hearts removed, their limbs ripped apart.Some of them were found in advanced state of decomposition. They had worms and maggots just like in my dream. I held back tears as best I could.  
"These are all of them?" I asked.  
"Theresa Hoese and a few others were not found among them, but they are reported missing. We fear the worst..." Mulder still looked dauntless.  
"Why did you brought this?"  
"Agent Mulder, you are the only one that had survive this...ordeal until now. According to information given to me this is not going to be a permanent condition." Mulder grunted. He walked around looking away from him but not daring to look at me. At this point all I could remember was the dream and the very real possibility that it was a vision of things to come.  
"What proof do you have this is true? I have no reason to trust you." Mulder says. Billy Miles face haunts me again. I knew that kid, I saw him catatonic eight years ago and then I saw him grown up to become a law enforcement official just like us. I saw his body barely alive in the hospital and I also saw him reborn into a heartless killing machine. His face looking at me when I was about to give birth to my son. Dreading that he will kill it just after taking his first breath into the world. I saw him looking at him with this blank expression and leaving. The others following him like they were telepathically connected. I thought it was over when they left.   
"He told us Billy Miles was going after you....You barely missed him. He was there yesterday a few hours after you left your apartment." He got him another folder with a surveillance picture of Billy on his parking lot. Billy had never being on that place before. Mulder seemed to understand the message. The idea that if not for our plans Mulder might be dead already almost made me pass out. Mulder can't die I cannot live that again, not again.  
"Did you caught him?" Mulder asked knowing the answer.  
"You know we can't catch this... man."  
"Where is he now?"  
"Against my orders I had enough time to sent him a false lead. He is back in Bellefleur, Oregon. It seems that whatever plans they have they don't want to cause a spectacle. That will buy some time. My best advice is for you to disappear, now. While you still can...The people inside the FBI will figure out soon that you were never back there. There are others like Billy that could be send to kill you. Others that we won't be able to recognize..." Mulder's hands were balled into fists.  
"How about Agent Scully and her baby? Wouldn't he come back here...?"  
"We are confident that if Billy wanted to kill Scully or harm her baby he would had done already...Isn't that true?" He looks at me and I nod.  
"But he could try to get to her to find me?" Mulder pleaded. The anger in his voice hides the fear.  
"Billy is working with others inside the FBI. The false information I planted was that you and Agent Scully never planned to raise this child together. That you were just doing a favor to a friend. I made sure they thought you were going to pursue your investigations outside the FBI, alone. Thanks to your... discretion, along with Scully's history as a patient of Dr. Parenti it made the more sense for anyone that looked from the outside."  
I guess it paid off that we were always careful. Mulder keeps holding out his feelings. But I can see his body language changing slowly defeated by the truth crushing him. Crushing us both. My son is sleeping so quietly now. Unaware of how much his life is about to change. I held his fist with my fingers. I will make the best choice for you William, always.  
"But they wanted her and her baby before..." Mulder seems unconvinced. But I know Kersh is right they were there just an arms length from taking my baby, killing me and Reyes and they didn't. They wouldn't have done that just to change their minds a few days later.  
"It seems that in spite of Dr. Parenti's sidebusiness he legitimately helped at least a dozen women to conceive and carry their children to term. We found some documentation that survived the fire." He handed the papers, directly to me this time. I could barely read them, they were burned, some of them had gotten wet, the ink washing off. But they had enough info to fill in the blanks.There were pictures of babies with gray skin, massive heads and big eyes, no visible earlobes. They were cataloged and dissected, filed as experiments with code numbers. Now I understood why they didn't took William. Whatever Zeus group was doing, their experiments on the women resulted on alien fetuses. William was obviously human.   
"We assume there was a mix-up and they put Agent Scully's pregnancy files along with the women they experimented on." There was some relief on that. William was completely normal, now and forever.  
"In any case I had said enough for you to consider your next action. I'm taking the risk that once they figure out you are not in Oregon they can't track the fake information back to me. In normal circumstances I would offer you a protection detail, but I don't know exactly how deep this goes and we might be placing you on harm's way. I trust your... discretion on my involvement." Kersh stood up. His hands were shaking, he was scared. He took the evidence he brought and left without so much saying goodbye. Mulder slammed the door behind him.  
"Can you believe this guy?" I swallowed hard. This was going to be probably the hardest argument I will ever have with him. I tried not to pay attention to how I was breaking my own heart along with his.  
"Mulder, he is right...You have to go." His face almost made me stop. I wanted to tell him to stay or to run all of us together but I knew that was the worst possible solution.  
"What?" He knelt in front of me to hold my hands.  
"You can't be serious...How can you believe it this easily?" There was so much pain on his eyes.  
"The dream I had Mulder was not just a dream it was a warning. If you stay, the supersoldiers will kill you, I'm sure of it." I held his hands as hard as I could knowing that this will be the last time in a long time.  
"But why now? They left me be when I found you?" It seemed strange I was going to be one explaining crazy theories. But knowing Mulder his brain was too busy finding reasons to not believe so he could stay. I knew how that felt I had been there so many years, but now he needed to believe more than ever, for the sake of all of us.  
"I think this is a new order. After they finished their search for all of hybrid fetuses, killing all the abductees that weren't transformed was the next step. It makes sense; they were counting on all of you to be part of their plans now you are just in the way of them."I tried to stay calm. My heart was divided between wanting to stay with Mulder and trying to keep him safe. Mulder let go of my hands abruptly. He stood up to rub his hands on his hair. He walked around frantically.  
"Scully but what about our family? What about our plans? I can't leave you now, not like this." His tears start to fall freely, now. He is begging me not to do this to him. I almost lose my resolution. I look at our sleeping son and think how will tell him that I could had saved his father but I wasn't strong enough. That thought gives me courage. I get up to kiss his tears away. I hold Mulder letting my tears fall too. Everything was so perfect why it had to end like this? He moved my head to look at my eyes.  
"You don't want me leave either. We can solve this together, I'm sure of it." His eyes were hurt. Only one word will take his pain away stay but I can't say it. Is not right. Please God give me the strength I need, to hurt him more instead of healing him.  
"Mulder for the first three months you were gone. I was in such a bad place, as bad as you were when I was taken. But I still could get up in the morning, I still could eat and shower and drive. I missed you terribly, but I still could do my work. I used to look at myself in the mirror every day before leaving, just to tell myself that could be the day I will see you again. The day we might find a lead to your location. Or the day they will return you in a random hospital as I was returned to you so many years ago." He nods.  
"I had a reason to go on and I had a source to draw my strength: the hope to find you. But when I found you dead..." I cry now, the pain still there to remember.  
"I died in that field with you too. The only reason I kept working and eating and waking up was my baby. The only thing that made me feel like there will be another day after tomorrow, that I need to think about the future was William. Without him I have no idea what I would had done..." I looked into his eyes and in his face I could see that he never imagined his survival was so necessary for me. I held his face with both of my hands.  
"You see Mulder as long as I know there is hope of seeing you again. As long as I know you are out there fighting for us, trying to find away to destroy this new incarnation of evil. I can live and work and fight. Take that away and I'll get lost. I will live for William and protect him. But it will be a hopeless weak existence. That is not what you want for me or for him don't you?"  
"But we are a team...We can't be apart."  
"Please, Mulder don't do this to me. I can't touch your cold body again. Touch your chest and not find a heartbeat. Hold your hand and feel it limp,inert...I can't live that again. I just can't." His voice was a whisper.  
"But William...?"  
"William needs a father that lives. That one day he will see again." He closed his eyes. He kissed my forehead and rested his on it for a few minutes.  
"Okay. I have to go... Let's go together, all three of us." I wish I could say yes.  
"Mulder...They found me. I was giving birth in the middle of nowhere, they still showed up, dozens of them." I shrug at the memories of their empty eyes. Devoid of compassion or humanity. I take Mulder's hand and put it in the back of my neck. He can feel the chip under my skin. Keeping me alive but also keeping a pawn in God only knows what sinister game.  
"The chip in my neck has been proven to be a tagging device. They know that if I disappear I will be with you...You can't risk it."Mulder's tears wet my pajamas. I try my best not to cry too much.   
"I love you and I love William...I don't...I can't leave."   
"Mulder, I trust you. You said it yourself we can solve this, we always do and in time we will. When that happens we will meet again, but now is better if you leave." I said not believing it myself. I didn't want him to leave us. I wanted to go with him, but we have to put his safety first if not for us for the sake of our baby. I hold his face and give him a kiss.  
"Scully, listen to me, listen to me. I'm a smart guy I can evade them..."He was desperate now, his words in a blur.  
"Mulder,no."  
"I have plenty of fake names to use. I can disguise myself, grow a beard, dye my hair...with glasses and a hat no one will recognize me." I stopped him.  
"Ocam's razor Mulder, if after your disappearance a strange man with your same height and nondescriptive face starts hanging out everywhere I go..." I didn't need to finish.  
"I can come back with a new face, plastic surgery can heal in a few months. I always hated my nose..." He says trying to make a joke.   
"No plastic surgery can change the way we gaze at each other..." He took his hands away from me. Walked away looking at nothing but I knew that look. He was cruising all the possible scenarios and ways he could stay with us. I had to stop him.  
"Mulder when you were going back to Oregon to find the ship. You asked me to stay..."  
"Scully, no..."  
"You told me that you couldn't risk losing me. You know I wanted to go and fight whatever was out there. I was not afraid of getting abducted again. You know that. But I stayed behind because I love you, because I was not going to take the smallest chance, you will have to go through the pain of losing someone you loved to an abduction,again... I did it just for you. I'm just asking you to do the same for me. I can't risk losing you either." I hated myself for throwing this back at him. Will he ever forgive me? He was speechless. Only tears on his eyes told me what he was thinking. His next words were a whisper.   
"Dana, please I love you..."  
"I love you too, but if you truly love me you will go as far as away as you can until is safe to come back again." Mulder will never forget I used our fresh declaration of love to make him go. He avoided my eyes and nodded silently. I won this time. Why did I felt like I lost? He embraced me, kissing my lips with pain, with despair,with resignation. With the sorrow of knowing that this world could only give us happiness for one day. Where was God today? Not here I could tell that much. The baby started to cry. He ran to it before I could take him and held him.  
"I'm sorry." he whispered on his ear. He placed his forehead in William's and he calmed down. My heart bleed just to see them like this. Knowing they won't have more time than this, for no idea how long. My little family so new and already breaking apart.   
"I'll miss his christening..." He whispers to our son.  
"We'll wait for you."  
"Will you?" He wasn't gone yet and he was already back to loneliness. His eyes are back to the darkness he had before. I pray this separation won't crush him beyond repair, before we can be together again.  
"When you come back, we will baptize him and we will get married and all this will be just a bad memory neither of us will ever remember for long." I said it more to convince myself than to convince him. He hugged me and kissed my forehead.  
"I take you won't tell me where are you going?" It was a redundant question we both knew the protocols of disappearing. We did it before when we got that encrypted tape and had to hide.  
"Is better if you don't know..." He threw his arm around me. I stayed hugging him like this for a while.  
"You remember the plan 1013?" Mulder had designed a couple of escape plans with return methods for safety and he made me memorize them. I remember telling him at the beginning how unnecessarily paranoid was this. I guess he was bound to be right one day. And it had to be today of all possible days in the years we have left on Earth.  
"Yes." I said slowly. He took William's bassinet and placed it next to the computer and sat down to arrange some people specialized indiscretion, quickness and invisibility. They will come and pick up his luggage and himself. They will bring a uniform so he can blend with them until they drop him in another secure place. He will only tell them where they are going once they are mobile. There, awaits for him an unregistered generic vehicle with a change of clothes, cash and some essentials. He probably will do this a couple of times until he goes to whatever safe location he feels is more convenient. I sat next to him. I held him as much as I could while he did his arrangements. I was tempted to tell him to stay, to be delusional about everything. Think that maybe Kersh was wrong, that my dream was just a subconscious fear. All it took was a knock in my door and both of us jumping to our guns to be prepared to shoot and run if the person opening the door was Billy Miles or anyone that acted like him. I knew then that this was the only thing we could do. Mulder put himself next to the door. I spoke.  
"Who is it?"   
"Skinner," He sounded confused. Mulder peered in a split of a second through the magic eye. Swiftly put his gun behind his waist and opened.  
"What is going on?' He said Mulder pulled him, glanced outside and closed the door.  
"Mulder, why the paranoia?" He obviously knew nothing. He was carrying a small package. A present for William.  
"Kersh hasn't told you?" Mulder asked. I could see the edge on his voice.   
"Kersh? I haven't been in the office. I just came to drop a present ...I guessed you two will be together...What was he supposed to tell me?" Mulder looks at me. Goes back to sit down in the computer.  
"Mulder has to go..." I said. Hearing it out loud made it all too real.  
"What? Now? How about...?"  
"Billy Miles and the others are killing the recovered abductees..." I tell him.   
"Oh my God!" The wound on his head is still covered with gaze. He knows how powerful they are. I ask him to sit down and fill him in. Occasionally, he glances at Mulder still in the computer. His face slowly matches ours. He was like a father to us, he seen our relationship grown and he has saved our lives many times. If were to have a wedding I would had asked him to give me away.  
"I understand...I will help you as much as I can. But with my only witness leaving there is not much I will be able to do in the future..." He bites his lip. He shot Krycek point-blank and the cameras caught it all. Without Mulder to defend him he will surely go to jail.   
"We'll change the tape..." Mulder said, from behind us.  
"What? You can't do that!"   
"No, what I can't do and what you can't do is leave Scully alone on the FBI. She needs a friend inside now more than ever." I stay silent. I can't afford the luxury of ethics right now. I hope that wherever my father is he understands. I had to think of Mulder's safety. Skinner was innocent of any wrongdoing too. This will help both. Skinner seems conflicted.  
"You will have Doggett and Reyes..."  
"They have no idea what they are getting themselves into...And we shouldn't pull them in more, that will only place them in more danger...Walter, you had been with us all this years, you know the truth. We need you inside." He rubs his chin. He looks at me for reassurance. He knows I wouldn't agree if it was not the best course of actions.  
"How?"  
"The gunmen can copy a tape from another weekend and they can change the dates...We can go in now and clean the mess on a few hours."  
"How about the body? Is on the morgue as we speak."  
"I'll take care of it..." I say.   
"A lot of John Doe's turn up in the morgue after a weekend. I know where the files are and how to change them."   
"How about fingerprints?"  
"Krycek made sure to disappear from every record in the planet a few years ago. No one will know who is it. At least no one who cares." He looks at his watch.  
"Kersh?"  
"He is on our side. Tell him as soon as you see him on Monday what we did. His life is in the line as much as mine." Mulder said.  
"We don't have much time." I quickly throw together some baby supplies and put my sleeping son in the car seat. Skinner takes his car and we follow in mine.  
"This the first time we go out as a family," Mulder says. The bitterness in his voice is clear. I hold his hand while we get to the Hoover building.   
Mulder and I used to work so often on weekends and at odd hours that the janitors and the few security guards don't even look at us twice. They probably don't know he is fired or care. I used my badge to get us both in. They don't even notice the car seat with my baby in tow. We split I go to the morgue to get to Krycek's body. I turn off the security camera so they don't see what I'm doing. I will think how to explain later is not like anything will be missing here.  
I look at him for the first time. Clean shot wound to the head, shots in arm and shoulder, prosthetic arm broken in three places. I remove the bullets and find some ones of similar size. Unidentified guns are common in this cases. I check his pockets and find fake ID some cash and some post-its and notes. I destroy them all. Put a new tag and clean out any other evidence that might incriminate Skinner. I try to think how I feel about this, about erasing any chance he has to tell his story. He did one decent thing when he saved our lives. But then he was accomplice of my sister's murder. He killed Mulder's father. He had been torturing Skinner into doing his bidding, tried to kill my unborn child, he was shot trying to kill Mulder. Can one act of good, even if done for selfish reasons, neutralize so much evil? I decided that I didn't have an answer for that and that right now I didn't care. I shove him back and make sure there was nothing different when the camera is turn on again.   
I go to the parking lot to see if they need my help for the cleanup. I drive around just to make sure nothing looks suspicious. I stumble upon Mulder and Skinner they have black plastic bags with them. Skinner gets on his car. Mulder approaches me.  
"We are going to meet with the gunmen in a coffee shop nearby. Do you need help with the morgue tape?" I shook my head I doubt anyone will notice.  
"Go home and wait for me there. Don't open the door to anyone." I nod and leave. I look back a lot during the trip checking we are not being followed.   
I get home and try to pack some things for Mulder. I find my Polaroid and take a picture of William and put it on his favorite jacket pocket. I know he doesn't need it, but I want him to have it anyway. I think about giving him my golden cross so he could have something from me. But I feel that if I give it to him is like giving up. Like I don't expect to see him again so I decide to keep it.   
I feed William, change him, burp him while I count the hours. I was about to call him when he opened the door. He looked very filthy, Skinner was not with him.  
"How did everything go?" He nods, takes his jacket off and sits on the couch. I'm tempted to tell him he is going to mess the upholstery. How do I wish this was the biggest problem we had right now.  
"It wasn't that hard. The supersoldiers had cleaned out most of the explosion and debris. They obviously want to keep infiltrating without being noticed," he said placing his hand on my knee. At least he sounds more resigned. I almost feel worst that he already accepted the plan.  
"We mostly had to clean up any evidence that could be used against Skinner. The gunmen did a great job with the tapes. Skinner is placing them back where they belong. No one will notice the difference Skinner will make sure Doggett drops the case." He put his head in the couch.  
"How are you two?"  
"Nothing interesting just baby stuff..."   
"Tell me, please..." I just give him a round down of the minutia of newborn care. He closes his eyes in silence. Committing to memory things he was planning to do, but now he won't. The light of day starts to shine.  
"The men will be here in one hour." He gets up and goes to the shower. I hear William crying and close the door so he can't hear him. I tell him everything is going to be okay. I wish I could believe it. Mulder comes out and picks up the first shirt and jeans he finds. My heart is beating so fast. I resist the urge to ask him to take us with him.  
"Eight years, Scully..," he said his hand pressing my cheek. I lay mine on his chest.   
"We'll have more..." I hear the door ringing. He doesn't take the gun just opens the door. The men wear hats and generic beige jumpsuits with beige baseball cap. They don't even look at me. They take the suitcases without a word. They finish quickly. Mulder, holds my hand looking at our son.  
"You still can change your mind..." he says in a defeated tone. He knows I won't.  
"We will be together again, I know it..." I said, and hope with all my heart I'm right. He kisses me again. His mouth consumes mine like he wanted to take part of me with him. I respond with the same desperation, we hug. Both of us are holding back our tears.   
"See you later, little man." He says to William and kisses his forehead.   
"I promise you that from this moment on all I will spent every day looking for a way to get back to you and to our son. I love you, Scully." He kisses me tenderly. He opened my hand and handed me his FBI ID.  
"I love you too." I answer while he walks away. He goes trough the door and closes it behind him. I'm alone now, holding my child, holding onto him.   
I had no tears to cry anymore. I sat down looking at my apartment. It's so empty and cold now. The light it had before seemed to dim. The darkness slowly creeping in the corners. My son was the only warm luminous body in this place. I was left behind like Penelope waiting for my husband to come back and hoping I was strong enough to take care of our son and for him to have a home to return.  
It didn't occurred to me until now that I should had asked him to pray with me again. Pray for a safe trip and fast return. But then I was sure if either of us could talk to God right now all we could ask him would be why? 

Fin


End file.
